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Sheaf of Papers. 



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By T. G. a. 



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BOSTON: 

ROBERTS BROTHERS. 



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Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1874, by 

ROBERTS BROTHERS, 

In the office of the Librarian of Congress, at "Washington. 



CAMBRIDGE: 
PRESS OF JOHN WILSON AND SON. 



TO 

OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES, 

WHO HAS PUT THE ELECTRICITY OF OUR CLIMATE INTO WORDS, 

AND BEEN TO SO MANY 

A PHYSICIAN TO THE MIND AS WELL AS THE BODY. 



PREFACE. 



In the fact that these slight and desultory 
papers have been written by dictation, a friendly 
hand holding the pen, the reader will be good- 
natured enough to find some excuse for their 
verbiage, and the activity of the irrepressible 
personal pronoun ; while it is hoped that they 
have gained thereby something of freshness, 
and a look of reality. 

Some of the papers have already appeared 
in the "Old and New" magazine. 



CONTENTS. 



PAGE 

Some Souvenirs of Round-Hill School . . 9 

The Two Monks 48 

A Leap from a Journal 63 

The Fly on the Wheel 83 

A Day with the French 92 

Touch and Go 110 

The Iconoclast of Sensibility 119 

The Flowering of a Nation 131 

A Cruise of the "Alice" 142 

Nearly a Bandit 183 

Lost Pleiads 196 

Art-Chat 215 

The New England Conscience 227 

On Temperament in Painting 242 

The Future of America 261 

Jasmin 273 

Yankee-isms 281 

At the Medium's 289 

Hours with the Poets 302 

Three Young Men 321 

Old Boston 333 

Provincialism 351 



A SHEAF OF PAPERS. 



SOME SOUVENIRS OF ROUND-HILL 
SCHOOL. 

nnWO gentlemen, Mr. Joseph Green Cogswell 
■*• and Mr. George Bancroft, both scholars, 
both travellers through Europe, familiar with 
the complete training of Germany, struck with 
the merits of a school near Berne, kept by Mr. 
Fellenberg, determined to try together a repeti- 
tion of it in .this country. Combining thorough 
culture with the advantages of physical edu- 
cation, Mr. Fellenberg's school was situated 
within easy reach of Alpine summits, whose 
white crests indented in a line the horizon, and 
held a perpetual promise of vacation delights 
after diligent study. Not merely the fascina- 
tions of Alpine ascent, but the severer home 
discipline of the gymnasium, secured develop- 
ment to the physical man, while, no doubt, an 
adequate attention to the routine of scholarship 
maintained thorough training in books. 
1* 



10 A SHEAF OF PAPERS. 

Such double advantages to a boy, of mental 
and physical growth, inside the school-house and 
in the open air, these American gentlemen were 
determined to obtain. By every law of asso- 
ciation and resemblance, they pitched upon a 
beautiful eminence near Northampton, then, as 
now, called Round Hill, for the site of their 
experiment. Their prospectus drew, like a 
magnet, boys from Maine to Georgia, sons of 
parents the most cultivated and wealthy the 
country could then boast. 

The school was opened in the autumn of 1823, 
and lasted about ten years. It is not too much 
to say, that, from that time to this, there has 
been no school in America which has combined 
so many advantages and attractions. 

It was a new thing, and full of fresh life, elas- 
ticity, and vigor. While it owed much to the 
proved scholarship and genius of Mr. Bancroft, 
the historian, and to the large staff of officers 
under him, all " Round-Hillers," as they love to 
call themselves, agree in attributing to the singu- 
lar combination of admirable qualities in the 
character of Mr. Cogswell its prosperity and 
success. He was a man who united, as is rarely 
met, the qualities of the man of study and of 
action. His head, filled as it was with the learn- 



ROUND-HILL SCHOOL. 11 

ing of America and Europe, could not over-bal- 
ance his generous large-heartedness, — so com- 
pletely, without attempting it in mij manner but 
by the direct display of his own character, did 
he win the respect and confidence of all his many 
scholars. At one time the boys must have num- 
bered as many as a hundred and fifty ; and they 
came from almost every State in the Union. 
Not war, not distance, not time, could ever 
break the bond which bound them to each other ; 
and the clasp which held them all was their 
reverence and affection for Mr. Cogswell. 

At a late meeting held in Boston, summoning 
the surviving scholars for the purpose of erect- 
ing a suitable monument to his memory, gray- 
headed men, who had scarce met since set face 
to face as boys in games at ball or marbles, all 
breathed but one feeling. The room where they 
assembled seemed filled with an aroma from the 
past. The spirit of eternal youth, which defies 
rheumatism and silver locks, shone in every eye. 
Clumsy figures seemed to desire to return to 
the elasticity and freedom of the playground. 
Familiar expressions and long-buried nicknames 
buzzed and flew in the air. One touch of boy- 
hood made the whole room kin ; and through 
every souvenir^ through every remembrance of 



12 A SHEAF OF PAPERS. 

former companionship, breathed, as the master- 
spell, the memory of the love, surviving death 
they bore to their early teacher. 

The relation of Mr. Cogswell with his scholars 
was very peculiar. He was not by nature fitted 
for the austere duties of the schoolmaster. There 
was very little of Dionysius the Tyrant in him, 
whose relish of the sufferings of the young peo- 
ple intrusted to him has survived even to the 
days of Dotheboys' Hall, and many another 
hidden nest of cruelty. In fact, in no sense 
was there much of the mere schoolmaster in Mr. 
Cogswell. His was an educational and training 
establishment, which rendered the services of 
book-learning and study but accessories to the 
larger intention of making the man and the 
gentleman. He was in his school, as in one of 
his summer excursion walks where he led off 
the procession, a boy of a larger growth and 
maturer experience, but nevertheless one of the 
party, and by no means a Jupiter Tonans, 
frowning from his arm-chair on a raised plat- 
form, aloof and apart from the rest. Indeed, 
his relation to the boys was scarcely even that 
of a teacher. He was the organizer, manager, 
and father of the community, while his partner, 
Mr. Bayicroft, did a great deal more of the teach- 



ROUND-HILL SCHOOL. 13 

ing ; and a large staff of German, French, and 
Italians, as well as eminent young men fresh 
from our college training, all worked assiduously 
under his general supervision. His department 
especially was that of moral and affectionate 
influence, besides which he was head farmer, 
builder, gardener, and treasurer of the place. 
His duties were more than enough, without the 
fatiguing details of recitation. He loved his 
school, his boys, his Round Hill, and his plans 
of expansion and embellishment in every di- 
rection, without much thought of profit or per- 
sonal advantage. All the money he made he 
put to fresh uses for his scholars. 

We do not know what the area of his domain 
was, — something like three-quarters of a mile 
square perhaps ; and its borders were known as 
" The Bounds," beyond which it was a pleasant 
wickedness to pass. The scholars were sorely 
tried, and did not fail frequently to violate these 
laws ; for on one side nestled under the Hill 
hospitable roofs, and shops of succulent attrac- 
tion for growing boyhood ; and on the other 
were noble woods, peopled by game, squirrels 
of all colors, woodchucks, rabbits, and very rarely 
even wild turkeys, to be hunted down leafy 
alleys, under majestic trees, which opened to 



14 A SHEAF OF PAPERS. 

the ardent fancy of the boy like vistas of the 
"Faerie Queene," where possibly a Una might 
be hid, but where glamour and enchantment 
surely reigned. 

The indirect influences of education are too 
often overlooked. Many a scholar, many a 
noble genius, has contracted the double habit 
of devotion to letters with deficient love of 
the outer world. Sterility, where genius should 
have bloomed, and not unfrequently an early 
death, have been the penalties paid for the 
thankless vigils of the desk. But the side-in- 
fluences of Round Hill were, perhaps, the best 
part of it, and are certainly what the scholars love 
and remember longest. Many another school 
has come up to as good a mark of training in its 
curriculum ; many, no doubt, have been supe- 
rior, in the severities of classic study, to Round 
Hill. Though one of the most distinguished 
Greek scholars of Germany, one of the most 
distinguished Latin scholars of America, were 
at the head of the Greek and Latin departments, 
we can allow this. But let any one visit the 
lovely site of this school, and he can readily 
imagine how many converging influences from 
such scenery acted upon these boys. At the 
foot of the eminence, shining through orchard 



ROUND-HILL SCHOOL. 15 

bowers, was the then stately town of Jonathan 
Edwards ; and, through the rich distance, 
glimpses of the indolent circuits of the Con- 
necticut were seen. Mount Holyoke, one of the 
few real mountains of Massachusetts, of noble 
outline and sufficient height, was ever encamped 
over against Round Hill, to stimulate imagina- 
tion with desire and mystery. 

It was a theory of Pat, an Irish factotum of 
the establishment, whose Celtic blackboard of a 
mind was constantly used by the plaj^ul wit of 
the boys for marvellous chalk sketches of " Gor- 
gons and chimeras dire," that Mount Holyoke was 
still infested with tribes of Indians, who made 
predatory excursions upon the hostile tribes of 
Mount Tom. The stupidest boy could take 
comfort in the benighted condition of this Celtic 
mind. And yet^ where, like a candle in a cellar, 
has not Hibernian imagination served to give 
the oddest shapes to familiar things ! A blunder 
of his, which has the salty flavor of a practical 
joke, was long remembered by us all. 

We used to study from six in the morning till 
breakfast time in mid- winter, always by candle- 
light. The winter's cold had full sway at that 
hour in the school-house. Also we had come 
from our warm beds to break ice in the pail for 



16 A SHEAF OF PAPERS, 

washing, in our haste often grinding our young 
cheeks against slabs of ice, as if they were so 
much soap. At midnight, we once found our- 
selves clustering round the school door, which 
refused admission, being locked. While the 
shivering crowd was speculating as to the rea- 
son, the principal descended with a shout upon 
the group, demanding the author of the prank. 
Poor Pat was its author. His watch, which 
had, undoubtedly, Celtic qualities like himself, 
had seemed to him to say " six o'clock," when 
the hands were pointing at half-past twelve. 
"With a laugh, we returned to our nests, to be 
extracted thence by the frozen fingers of early 
morning and repeat our miseries. 

Pat was the plastron^ the butt, the victim, of 
incipient humorists. But Michael, another Irish- 
man, was the expression of fate, as administered, 
through strength, to naughty boys. He was 
active, laborious, honest ; and Mr. Cogswell has 
related with pleasure how, very recently, a 
descendant of his came to see him, relying upon 
old memories. Mr. Cogswell's theory of punish- 
ment was the reverse of that of the English 
schools. We have heard one English mother 
exclaim pathetically to another, that she feared 
a diminution or loss in England of the venerable 



ROUND-HILL SCHOOL. 17 

habit of fagging. She referred much of the 
manliness of the English to this. It is a sub- 
stitute for democracy in a brutal fashion ; bring- 
ing a lord in subjection for a while to the 
commoner, whom, later in life, he would not 
notice. " Ah ! there is my fag at Eton, Lord 
— , whom I remember so well," said an Eng- 
lish gentleman, on the Piazza di Spagna at 
Rome. 

" Go and speak to him." 

" I must not till he first notices me," replied 
he : " he had to black my boots at Eton, but 
now I must wait for his nod." 

The American may perhaps say that this school 
habit of theirs has also much to do with the 
latent bully that lies behind the veneer of an 
Englishman's courtesy. It makes, with its off- 
set, fawning, that British whole which Thack- 
eray exposed and lamented as the snob. 

Mr. Cogswell's theory was one of guidance : 
such occasional departures from right as become 
human nature were to be punished by loss of 
privileges, deprivation of play-time, and some- 
times degradation to a lower form in the school, 
but never by violence. He occasionally threat- 
ened, when the sinful element predominated, to 
bring us into the slavish routine and military 



18 A 8EEAF OF PAPERS. 

subjection of West Point; but it was only a 
threat, and the boys knew it. Still, there was 
one mysterious punishment in use, for Titanic 
breaches of authority, which impressed the boys 
with its grandeur. This was " the dungeon," 
in which the most refractory subjects were some- 
times put; and, as no one went of his own 
accord, the Herculean Michael was there to exe- 
cute the commands of the lord of all. Through 
accident and infirmity, sometimes the most be- 
loved and even orderly boys would manage to 
get in, under some strain of their irrepressible 
natures, in which, according to the Calvinistic 
theory, as in bottled ginger-beer, a thousand 
original sins were always ready to pop forth. 
The most Miltonic thing which I remember 
about this " dungeon " used to be whispered 
through the school with a shudder of pride. 
One of those exuberant physical natures where 
reserved strength seems to lie as in the quarry, 
one of those over-bright torches, which, as Dr. 
Holmes has already, said, flare and burn them- 
selves away to an early grave, — a boy of this 
sort was imprisoned in the dungeon.; but hardly 
had Michael retired to his lair, after difficult 
ser^dce, when our Samson was seen stalking 
indignantly abroad with the gates of Gaza in 



ROUND-HILL SCHOOL. 19 

his muscular hands. In college, behind simplic- 
ity, and even sweetness of manner, housed in 
the muscles of this youth, would lie the lubbar- 
fiend. Oftentimes in night rows, with a lan- 
guid action worthy of the Greek ideal, would 
he strew recumbent, groups of assailing heroes, 
a kind of lift-cure which seems demanded for 
the prodigious powers of some youths, and 
which often left him, we noticed, at breakfast 
the day after, with a meditative, and, if one 
may say so, religious expression of countenance, 
while the Greek serenity of his face wore an air 
of vague trouble. 

Though limited by " the bounds " usually, we 
were permitted excursions occasionally, both in 
winter and summer ; sometimes with our eccen- 
tric German drawing-teacher. Dr. Graeter, to 
sketch the lovely scenery which abounded near 
the Hill. It was a delightful afternoon's occu- 
pation, and often led us to the banks of the 
Licking Water. To this small but lovely 
river we got access by passing by a tanyard, 
the healthy odor of which became, in the boys' 
minds, indissolubly mingled with a relish of 
these forays upon nature. Sometimes "the 
Doctor," for that was his title, would permit 
us to sketch by ourselves, coming later himself. 



20 A SHEAF OF PAPERS. 

On one occasion a boy, profiting by this liberty, 
had, with the others, enjoyed a glorious swim 
in the river ; in consequence of which, on being 
asked by the doctor to exhibit the sketch he 
had made, he could only find one of a palm- 
tree, which happened to be in his book. In 
broken English, and with much solemnity, the 
doctor desired to be conducted to the tree. 
After being taken some distance, in the hope 
of tiring him out, the boy said it was so far 
south that he feared they would not get back 
in time for supper. " I should dink so," ex- 
claimed the doctor, without moving a muscle 
of his face. 

When swimming with the boys, the doctor 
was accustomed to wear a hat in the water; 
and his long locks flowing about his neck, while 
his broad shoulders glistened from the wave, 
won for him the sobriquet of " a lion with a hat 
on." To bathe in the Licldng Water, though 
of course warmer than the sea, was a perfect 
delight. So lucid was it, that its bottom was 
everywhere visible. The sprays of over-arching 
trees touched and made music against its sur- 
face; birds flew and sang overhead; scarcely 
was there a sign of man visible, and all seemed 
poetry and enchantment. Nor was the charm 



EOUNB-EILL SCHOOL. 21 

diminished in winter, when, beneath the fault- 
less ice, as through glass, were seen the pebbles 
below. To make one's first impression upon 
its virgin surface, and to carve one's initials 
upon the bosom of the Naiad of the woods, was 
a rapture which led to breathless flights of skim- 
ming boys, each seeking to outstrip the other. 
Wordsworth has so well rendered a scene of 
this sort, that we place it here as a substitute 
for our inferior prose : — 

" All shod with steel, 
We hissed along the polished ice in games 
Confederate, imitative of the chase 
And woodland pleasures, — the resounding horn, 
The pack, loud chiming, and the hunted hare. 
So, through the darkness and the cold, we flew, 
And not a voice was idle ; with the din 
Smitten, the precipices rang aloud ; 
The leafless trees, and every icy crag. 
Tinkled like iron ; while far distant hills 
Into the tumult sent an alien sound 
Of melancholy not unnoticed." 

The indefatigable zeal of Mr. Cogswell to 
extend the advantages of his school caused him 
to purchase many horses for horseback exercise ; 
and, in a cloud of cavalry, we were accustomed 
to scour the plain as far as the distant banks of 
the Connecticut. The Spanish teacher, Mr. 
San Martin, was a most accomplished horseman 



22 A SHEAF OF PAPERS. 

in the Spanisli manner, and he often accom- 
panied us. He rode with great aplomb, with 
depressed heel, and had all the look of a true 
cahallero. He was, like many of his nation, 
irascible ; and he also had an imagination of 
his own. He delighted to astonish us while 
" pitching the bar," by recounting a feat of his, 
of once sending the iron bar over a small chapel 
with such force that it bent in the air. He was 
watchful for certain insulting mistranslations at 
recitation ; and when occurred the Spanish word 
todos, which he feared to hear rendered " toads," 
the expectant passion, of his face was a wonder 
to behold. 

" Pitching the bar " was generally done near 
the school-house ; but the regular exercise of 
gymnastics was upon a plateau just below the 
hill, where gymnastic appliances, then freshly 
introduced from Germany, were in abundance. 
We believe the thorough practice of a gym- 
nasium, as is usual in Germany, under a most 
distinguished gymnast, was with us first intro- 
duced at Round Hill. It thence later made a 
flight to Boston; where, under the conduct of 
the eminent Dr. Lieber, — in what was then 
called the Washington Gardens, — many a 
pursy pater-familias might have been seen 



ROUND-HILL SCHOOL. 23 

risking apoplexy, in the effort to rival the 
students of Heidelberg and Jena. 

We remember, in connection with the gymna- 
sium, a trait of over-conscientiousness on the part 
of a boy, which was but the indication of even 
a deeper-lying morbidness than this showed. 
Hearing the prayer-bell while ascending the 
ladder hand over hand, he came down so quickly 
that he left the ladder upright, but all tremu- 
lous. On his way to the school-house, he asked 
anxiously if the ladder had not fallen. We 
assured him it had not. Not content with this, 
he could not rest in his bed, till he had dressed 
himself and gone the long way to the gymna- 
sium, where, of course, he found the ladder in 
its place. This boy was a victim to sleep- 
walking, and would cross in his sleep from his 
bedroom to another, with moans and supplica- 
tions for help against some invisible enemy. 
We were permitted to have tool-chests, which 
were generally placed under our beds. With 
alarm, it occurred to the boys, that, in his con- 
fusion of mind, the sleep-walker might make 
use of our hatchets against ourselves, as a part 
of his dream. So we told him, when awake, 
that we should remove the chests, and put rods 
in their place, which we should use if he dis- 



24 A SHEAF OF PAPERS. 

turbed us again. The intimation sank deep 
into the obscure region whence the dreams 
came, and he was never known to have them 
recur. 

One of the great pleasures of the boys was a 
garden, — a considerable bit of ground between 
the gymnasium and the farm-house, where many 
infant-lessons in farming were gained. But 
mostly the boys were as awkward with the roots 
of their vegetables and flowers, treating them 
in defiance of the laws of patience and develop- 
ment, as they were with those tougher roots 
which fill the soil of Greek and Latin culture. 
An impatience of the growth of pease and 
peppers, of cucumbers and melons, has always 
characterized the impetuous young farmer. 
The willingness of a youth to see whether his 
nasturtium or melon had taken root has been 
the cause of a metaphor applying the process to 
the more tender budding of the affections ; and 
people have been accused of pulling up many 
a half-rooted engagement between lovers, in 
the hope of discovering whether it was really 
fixed in the soil of the heart. 

A greater pleasure than the garden was the 
unexpected bliss, through the generosity of Mr. 
Cogswell, of being co-proprietors of a boy- village, 



ROUND-HILL SCHOOL. 25 

not to be found on any map, wliich bore the happy 
name of " Crony Village." Its site was beyond 
the gymnasium, on a sloping hill, running down- 
ward to a brook. Mr. Cogswell furnished us 
with bricks and mortar, beams and boards ; and, f 

generally dividing into families of two, soon the 
little colony was constructed ; and the evening 
smoke ascended from many hearths, round which 
we were seated, reading, or playing friendly 
games, or devouring, with a relish which no after- 
meals could know, Carolina potatoes drawn from 
the ashes, each an ingot of pure gold, with added 
gold of butter ; game, such as squirrels, the spoil 
of our bows, or rabbits caught in our traps ; and ' 
pies and doughnuts, brought in mysterious raids 
from distant taverns and farm-houses. 

A misadventure of the sort which Cupid will 
sometimes find to discomfit his children, brought 
Crony Village to an untimely end. So serious 
had a boy's flirtation with the rosy-cheeked 
vendor of pies and doughnuts in a neighboring 
farm-house become, that his expulsion was con- 
sidered necessary; and, between two lines of 
grieving friends, the unlucky youth, with an in- 
visible but flaming sword above his head, — 

" From Eden took his solitary way." 

It was then, without surprise, though with 

2 



26 A SHEAF OF PAPERS. 

profound anguish, that the boys heard from Mr. 
Cogswell's lips, after a short speech, the agoniz- 
ing words, " ' Belenda est Carthago ; ' Crony- 
Village shall be no more." A committee of 
destroyers, chosen from the boys, was appointed 
by Mr. Cogswell to do the work. With heavy 
hearts, before school was dismissed, under the 
magnificent chestnuts, which seemed to wave in 
sympathy, they proceeded on their fatal errand. 
Of course, they began with their own houses. 
When they had seen their own hearths made 
desolate, they could find strength to prostrate 
every fraternal roof ; but so deep was the rever- 
ence and respect for Mr. Cogswell, that even 
this great calamity was accepted as a thing not 
only inevitable, but just ; and they soon bore to 
see, without flinching, the carious hollows along 
the hill, where so much geniality and romance 
had found a home. 

In the main, the male sex predominated on 
the Hill. The masters were men, the boys were 
little men, and woman was a rara avis in terra. 
But one room there held two persons, without 
whom no boy's life can be complete : the one, 
the elder, supplied to him a little the place of his 
absent mother; by her cosey fireside he found 



ROUND-HILL SCHOOL. 27 

something of the old home-feeling, and could 
ease that choking home-sickness which at times 
must rise in his throat. There were no turbu- 
lence and competition, but woman's sympathy 
and tender care. Mrs. Ryder may have well 
wondered, perhaps, why the boys loved her so 
much ; but at least she half understood it. She 
felt, in her nature, expanded, till she could em- 
brace, with something of a mother's regard, so 
large a family. It was luck for her to be in loco 
parentis to so many : the well-spring of feeHng, 
diverted from its natural channel, made green 
for her the waste places of her life. There was 
the boy allowed to sit, and say and ask those 
things which could not be said elsewhere. In 
her hospitable shovel could he run the lead for 
the tops of feathered arrows and fairy hatchets, 
whose edge was not of the finest, and other 
forms of rare device. She could say nay to no 
wish of the boys ; while behind, hovering like 
an Aurora, her rosy daughter stood for them all 
as an ideal of womanhood. She had less to say 
to them than her mother, but distance and with- 
drawal did not prevent their devotion. 

Once the elderly woman was taken with a fever, 
to the great grief of us all. Daily messages of 
love were sent to her, which the daughter re- 



28 A SHEAF OF PAPEBS. 

turned through her tears. At last, just as we 
all expected her to die, she had a vision of one 
of the boys standing with a glass of soda in a 
certain place by her bed, on taking which, she 
instantly recovered. The boy was told of it, 
procured the soda, stood as the vision indicated, 
and gave her the refreshing draught. After 
that, she immediately recovered. 

Perhaps it may be wrong to mix in so plain a 
narrative, and in a world so very intelligible and 
commonplace as this, a hint of any thing so won- 
derful ; but somehow, with all the efforts of men, 
the wonderful will not behave as it should. Not 
the finger of the divine, which bids it remember 
that the day of miracles is over and begone ; not 
the last analysis of the last experiment of Hux- 
ley or Tyndall, can make the creature behave as 
it ought. It persists, like Banquo, in taking its 
place at the feast of Life ; and, if it did not be- 
long to the table d'hote by God's permission, it 
would not be there so often. It is something 
sad to find, on reading the book of Sergeant 
Cox, that clever lawyer, who, poor fellow, like 
all other believers in this wonderfulness, has 
been smirched and belabored by his irresponsi- 
ble critics, — it is sad that even he should rejoice 
in corking the genius well into the bottle, and, 



ROUND-HILL SCHOOL. 29 

holding it up, exclaim triumphantly, " Uncon- 
scious cerebration ! " It won't do ; no, it won't 
do to extend the power of man into these new 
regions. He must be made to deny his heavenly 
birthright ; he must be clipped of angelic cousin- 
hood ; he must say to the towering promises of 
imagination, ''Down! Science will have it so!" 

And yet, for all that, Science may be as mis- 
taken as to the fact, as she is discourteous to the 
longings of the soul. She may yet come to re- 
gret her impiety ; though we fear that even the 
discovery of the truth would be attended with 
little humility, and that she would as good as 
say to the world then that the wonderful exists 
only by her permission, and that the fact was no 
fact, till it bore her label and superscription. 
These poor, dear words, like " unconscious cere- 
bration," have to do harder work than seems 
natural for them. Perhaps, among the vulgar, 
the heaviest-laden word, where the wonderful is 
concerned, is the word " coincidence." A mys- 
terious power predicts that such a thing shall 
happen. Does it happen, — '' what a strange 
coincidence ! " The mysterious power must dis- 
appear, and coincidence get into its boots. 

The organ of nourishment, in its demands, is 
something marvellous. The man looks back 



80 A SHEAF OF PAPERS. 

upon his youthful appetite almost with that 
reverence and envy which make a part of his 
long regret for the boy's ardor, innocence, and 
activity. He sometimes sees in young puppies, 
in after life, and other browsing and feeding 
animals when young, something of the energy 
of that youthful mastication. In the boy, as in 
the puppy, food seems to be instantly turned into 
fresh life ; so that there is always before him a 
yawning void, which no end of ordinary meals 
can fill up. In vain does he throw into the abyss 
peanuts, maple-sugar, and all the foreign fascina- 
tions of the grocer's shop : semper atque recurrit. 
Nothing could be less like Mr. Squeers's table 
than the generous board of the Eound-Hillers. 
It was one of the habits, by the by, of the school, 
to prescribe occasionally at meals conversation 
for groups in various modern languages; but 
over that trivial barrier the hound-like appetite 
of the boy could easily leap. No Spanish diffi- 
culty, in rendering "doughnuts" or '' apple-pie," 
could long keep him from those dainties. It was 
a great discovery in the matter of apple-pies, 
— each of which, with its kindred circles of 
squash and pumpkin, had to be divided among 
five, — when the skilful carver found the exact 
angle at which a piece could be cut. This had 



BOUND-HILL SCHOOL. 31 

to be bisected ; thus leaving, with these two, the 
remaining three pieces all to a hair of the same 
size. What greater crime could there have been 
than to put off upon such appetites a piece un- 
justly small ? 

Twice a week, I believe, we had cake at tea. 
Now marbles, a favorite game with all boys, 
would cause those of audacious hopes but in- 
ferior skill, not only to lose to the clever players 
their superb blood-alleys, veined and blushing, as 
it were, with life, and, in fact, all their marbles, 
but they would pledge in advance, on the issue 
of the game, their cake of many cake-days ahead. 
It was a distressing sight to see these victims of 
bad luck, sometimes in great numbers, surren- 
der to one haughty victor, perhaps, the cake of 
weeks. 

The not morbid, most healthy and animal hun- 
ger of the boys found a dangerous gratification 
in parcels of goodies, placed by naughty carpen- 
ters and workmen, who would accept the boys' 
money, in caches agreed upon beforehand. Some- 
times the simplicity of a boy would induce him 
to procure from a town friend a box of fabulous 
attraction, — guava, heavy and luscious in its 
filmy boxes; prunes, purple and pretentious, 
with mystical French titles upon their corks; 



82 A SHEAF OF PAPERS. 

gingerbread, with tenderness and aroma ever 
decreasing, til] it became but a chestnut saw- 
dust ; preserved peaches, swimming in a liquor 
fitter for men than boys ; huge fans of raisins, 
looking like those of Eshcol, that fruit whose 
juice, thinned with water, cooled with snow, is 
the famous sherbet of the East. 

Such boxes were always seized by the authori- 
ties on their way to the person whose address 
they bore, and confiscated. Too often, with 
heavy heart, he would be allowed to look past 
the lifted lid, upon the treasures which were 
denied him. At the end of the term, on the 
day preceding vacation, with a cynicism to which 
only virtue can attain, he was permitted to re- 
cover his spoil. To divide among friends, the 
dearest and nearest, was mostly a funereal pleas- 
ure ; but some things, such as squares of choco- 
late, would be none the worse for keeping. 

How well we remember, on such an occasion, 
noticing the transparent whiteness of the hand 
of a boy we little knew, while removing the 
odorous chocolate-pot from the fire. " A bad 
life that ! " shot through us with a painful flash. 
Years after we accosted, accidentally, a soldierly 
figure, wanting a hand and arm as well. It was 
the boy whose white hand had so given us pain. 



ROUND-EILL SCHOOL. 33 

On mentioning the anecdote to him, he said his 
delicacy had determined his profession. He was 
a soldier. America owned none braver or better. 
When he, like so many gallant spirits, was shot 
down in the front of battle, all said that one 
preux chevalier of the past, one Bayard, had 
perished with General Kearney. 

That feeling of death in the world, which the 
white hand suggested, came to us most rarely. 
On the breezy hill, with good food, life was only 
too delightful. One could almost wish for death, 
at times, to turn such rapture into an euthanasia. 
One boy only was lost by death while we were at 
the school ; and yet, mixed with this dawn-flash 
of animal spirits, behind these bounding pulses, 
unspoken of, terrible, were working outward the 
religious and immortal germs within. Many a 
journal, blotted by tears, betrayed the heart- 
agony, the aspiration, and the longing, which 
none suspected. The fearful crisis of soul-birth, 
when each one finds developing for himself, at 
the roots of his being, that mystical function, 
rudimentary for another world, and mostly a 
grieving and alienated witness of the imperfec- 
tions of this, should not be unnoticed in the 
boy's story. Anecdotes could be told of tender- 



34 A SHEAF OF PAPERS. 

ness of conscience, of flights of honorable un- 
selfishness, of pledges where a word was better 
than a bond, of friendships which bore the un- 
spotted confidence of youth ; but not for such a 
sketch as this are these sacred treasures of the 
heart. Out under the moonlit spaces of the 
hill, with the stars only, and the ineffectual 
sympathy of the surrounding chestnuts, would 
the boy breathe his confidences, and wrestle 
with his agony, longing for that bosom upon 
which to rest, which he shall miss for evermore. 

The boy's privacy is not like that of the 
man. It is tenderer, more agonizing, more ea- 
sily wounded, for ever sacred, and yet too often, 
not only by his schoolmaster, but by the dear 
members of his own family, unknown or uncared 
for. A child too often secretly conceives a con- 
tempt, a half-abhorrence, of dear and close rela- 
tions, whose clumsy touch can only manage to 
wound the fibres of his growing heart, — can 
treat with disregard, as naught, the young 
heaven of hopes and fears which is opening be- 
fore him. He will often say to himself, " Let 
me remember, when I grow to be a man, not to 
be as ignorant as these of the proud and way- 
ward recesses of a boy's affections." 

*' The child is father of the man," no doubt; 



i 



BOUND-MILL SCHOOL. 35 

but how often does the stupid adult fail of rev- 
erence for such a parent ! 

The element in the school which was the most 
distinctive perhaps, and borrowed from the Swiss 
schools, was the annual journey we took. What 
a buzz of preparation preceded it! How our 
muscles were brought into training ! How our 
hopes flew before us, making such a foot journey, 
sometimes across States, a pilgrimage as to some 
Holy Land ! How serious we were in the cut- 
ting and preparing of the staff, the cane, which 
we were to carry ! Those who have not used 
such a staff — not a short cane, held from the 
hoUow of the hand, but long, and pushed to the 
ground behind — can hardly imagine how like it 
is to a third limb. While it stimulates speed, it 
relieves fatigue. It seemed to say " Onward ! " 
at our heels ; and, at the same time, its firm 
grasp suggested a weapon and protection from 
the imagined bandits and robbers of these un- 
known regions. 

We went with horses and wagons, "ride and 
tie," with intention of not running down or 
fatiguing the weak; but all held sturdily on. 
Cities were visited, villas of friends admired 
and examined, rivers crossed, until at last, at 



36 A SHEAF OF PAPERS. 

the end of the journey, we would find ourselves 
encamped, and look from the hill-side, while 
enjoying the comfortable meal which the neigh- 
boring village had famished, upon a great water, 
to us as mystically pronlising, though remote, 
as that Arthurean sea into which, — 

"Making lightnings in the moon, 
Fell Excalibur/' 

That water was the Atlantic Ocean. Nor can 
tediousness of living, the familiar round of 
weariness, the prose of the dusty street, the 
disappointment of life, ever take away wholly 
the charm that hangs along the ocean's rim. 
To the man it is an invitation, as to the boy ; 
and when the friendly giant has won us to Jiis 
offers, how well, how patiently, will he bear our 
burdens from shore to shore ! 

To us, at Saybrook, in Connecticut, the ocean 
offered merely fishing, but such fishing ! A com- 
fortable fishing-smack was got 'for us, by our 
ever-thoughtful master; and many were the 
quaint and new specimens of marine life that 
flopped and fluttered on our deck. They 
seemed really a part of the fairy-land we all 
believed in. One waggish creature made him- 
self into a ball when punched, and emitted 
ejaculations like grunts, which convinced every 



^ 



I 



ROUND-HILL SCHOOL. 37 

one that if not one of the happiest, he was cer- 
tainly one of the most humorous of dying fishes. 
Perhaps it was the Deity's intention that we 
should think him funny; perhaps it was best 
that we should think him funny, even in death, 
rather than, like the boys in model story-books, 
profit by the occasion, and drop a sympathetic 
tear. This element of fun, in the works of 
God, is one which Religion has accepted with 
reluctance. To this day she will associate 
solemnity with the thoughts of the Maker. 
Even yet the serious aspect, the dreary ritual, 
are supposed to reflect the Father's face better 
than the cheer and confidence which belong to 
man. 

On conversing once with our great naturalist 
upon these elements of humor in the works of 
God, the many animal conditions of our own 
lives, the many queer and prodigious growths 
he has. made, — the living puns, for such they 
really seem to be, as, for instance, in the orchid, 
where a flower imitates a bird in its nest, — 
with a laugh the great Agassiz said he hoped 
to write, yet, a work to bear the title, " Dieu 
comme Farceur,''^ May his valuable life be 
preserved to do it ; may the weariness of ill- 
ness, the storms and dangers of the Pacific, 



S8 A SHEAF OF PAPERS. 

find their offset in the cheer and merriment 
of his manly nature, and the still farther dis- 
covery of creatures formed to suggest a smile, 
and so brighten our pathway to the grave ! * 

There is nothing that boys enjoy more than 
pillow-fights. The hurry and the scamper to 
and fro, the innocent injury which the descend- 
ing pillows inflicted, the air of battle, with the 
sense of its bloodlessness, stimulated us to a 
high delight. The battle-field of these contests 
was usually the platform at the stair-head be- 
tween two stories. There, for a short space, 
raged all the din and eagerness of an Homeric 
contest. One boy, a great favorite, with a 
conscience too tender to share in the naughty 
fray, would stay in his bed ; but his exultation 
and cries of sympathy reached, through the 
open door, the ears of all the combatants. He 
was respected in his isolation, for it was known 
how true and faithful was his sense of duty. 
In his case, as in so many others, something 
in his character, that sweet maturity of good- 
ness, that ripening for the sky, proclaimed but 
too well that he was not long to be a pained 
participant in the battle of life. Heaven took 

* This paper was first published in 1872, before the death of 
Professor Agassiz. 







tlOUND-HlLL SCHOOL. 89 

him to itself at an early age ; but his memory 
still lives with surviving friends, with all that 
lovely bloom of character upon it, and that high 
promise of intellectual distinction, which to 
memory is almost dearer than would be its 
fulfilment. 

On one occasion two stories were fighting 
from their platforms, the lower attempting by 
the stairs to carry the upper by storm. In the 
midst of the noisiest of the contest, a head- 
master was discerned ascending the stairs to 
make an end of this warfare. Seeing him, the 
fury of the combatants redoubled ; and it was 
not without a certain sinful pleasure that the 
boys saw him lifted from his footing to the low- 
est stair, by the Homeric onslaught of one of 
the most active youths. In a moment the pre- 
tended accident of mistaking him for a boy was 
qualified by apology, and offers of the profusest 
sympathy. His assailant was too well hidden 
in the cloud of soldiers to be discovered or 
punished. 

We can hardly believe that school-boys now, 
anywhere, are fortunate enough to have such 
an abundance of wild creatures upon which to 
exercise their skill. The huge chestnut-trees 
of the wood literally swarmed with squirrels, 



40 A SHEAF OF PAPERS. 

chiefly red and gray. The chipmonk, or, as 
the Southern boys used to call him, " fence- 
mouse," was scarcely counted as game. In 
the balmy twilight of our lovely summer even- 
ings, often and often might the flying-squirrel 
be seen floating from tree to tree, at an incli- 
nation of forty-five degrees ; his wings allowing 
him only to cross at an angle as low as this, 
and ascent being impossible to him. Rabbits 
and woodchucks were to be trapped ; but the 
squirrels, the partridges, — which are no par- 
tridges at all, but a species of grouse, and, with 
a still wilder nomenclature, called by Southern 
boys pheasants, — robins, bluejays, woodpeckers, 
among them the superb yellow-hammer, occa- 
sionally king-fishers, all fell before our bows. 
The bows were mostly made of ash, and the 
arrows of hickory : their heads were sometimes 
tipped with steel points, or sharpened cones of 
tin. These would oftentimes go clear through 
a squirrel or a robin ; and, alas ! too often stick 
in some inaccessible but well-remembered chest- 
nut bough. Then, after a storm, how the boys 
would, at the end of morning's study, fly to 
those trees, hoping to find, shaken to their feet 
by the wind, their darling weapons ! On one 
occasion there was a great tumult among us, 



i 



ROVND-HILL SCHOOL. 41 

on the discovery of a solitary visitor to the 
wood, — a coal-black squirrel, such as we had 
heard of as existing in Ohio, but unknown in 
our excursions. The poor emigrant was as 
severely visited for his color as, for so long, 
were human beings of a similar tint: color in 
both cases made the excuse for a violence which 
is now, happily for the latter at least, disappear- 
ing^ from the world. The black squirrel was 
brought to bay upon a topmost bough, to which 
he closely clung till he reached its end, where 
it diminished to a spray. Then he crouched ; 
the whole school looking eagerly up to see the 
finishing. A leader of one of the bow-clubs, 
into which the school was divided, intentionally 
struck with his first shot the bough under him 
with an arrow whose head was blunt. This 
caused him to jump forward enough to expose 
his side. The next arrow pierced him ; and, 
after being carried a little way into the air, as 
he fell amid the club which had a right to seize 
him, its youngest member fell upon and secured 
the squirrel, and, as he handed it to the leader, 
with a Spartan smile exhibited Ins streaming 
hand, which was bitten through. 

Clouds of wild pigeons would, in those hal- 
cyon days, darken the sky. One must read 



42 A SHEAF OF PAPERS. 

Audubon to know in what multitudes, what 
miles they covered, with what murmurs, as 
of many waters, they would float along the 
forest aisles, to know what America has lost, 
or is losing. They sometimes visited the hill, 
weighing down the trees, and in the close nest- 
ling of their siestas, breast by breast, would so 
cover a bough that they made but one continu- 
ous line. But the boys' wild hopes would be 
short. Upon one being hit, or more often 
missed, the whole colony would disperse with 
a silent fish-like plunge through the air, leav- 
ing, before disappointed eyes, but a trail of 
pearly beauty. 

Much of this game would do for the repasts 
of Crony Village. Nothing can be better than 
a broiled squirrel, unless it be a well-roasted 
rabbit, which, by the by, naturalists say is no 
rabbit at all, although from its size and habits 
this is hard to believe. Frogs, it was sug- 
gested, — probably by the French boy, -^ would 
be excellent ; and so they were found. Their 
legs, white as the meat of chicken, with a ten- 
derness all their own, are a real daiiity. We 
wonder, that, being so good, they are not of- 
tener found in our markets, where they would 
have a ready sale. 



1 



nOUND-ItlLL SGSOOL. 4S 

The garrulity of age might enlarge upon the 
delights and experiences of the school, till it 
bestowed, Hke another Dogberry, *'all its te- 
diousness upon the reader ; " but I forbear. 
All men, once schoolboys, can supply from 
their memories much that might have been 
said. That early morning prime to them seems 
to swim in the 

" Light that never was on sea or land ; " 

and the fascination which should accompany 
such gossip of the past may easily be led too 
far. But can it be wondered at, now that 
the surviving scholars are gathering about the 
gravestone of their beloved teacher, recently 
dead, that some bubbles from the boys' spring 
should well up, to give token of the happiness 
and affection of days long ago ? Yes, affection ; 
for the respect and reverence which we bore 
to our dear master were intwined with a feeling 
softer and tenderer than the austerity of a boy's 
duty. He seemed, in the making of us, so 
much one of ourselves, the leader of us all. 
And among the roll of eminent names which 
can be found upon the catalogue of the school, 
none can be held as nobler, manlier, more be- 
loved, than his. 

Eight years since, while Mr. Cogswell was a 



44 A SHEAF OF PAPERS. 

resident of Cambridge, it was thought desirable 
that "the boys" still surviving should again 
collect around their old friend and master. In- 
vitations to a dinner given him at the " Parker 
House " were sent to the remotest parts of the 
Union. Several of the instructors at Round 
Hill, and all the boys whose distance from the 
scene did not preclude them, were at the ban- 
quet. Words fail to picture the sympathetic 
crowd of associations which gathered there. 
Men who pass each other in the street with a 
nod of hurry and business, those who never 
even meet now, were all subdued to boyhood 
again hj the spirit of the hour. Old anecdotes 
were told, familiar nicknames, bits of memories 
of boyish pranks, came breaking through the 
crust of time. Again the old sunshine of the 
master's countenance beamed upon his children. 
Their mutual delight at meeting, they sought 
vainly to express ; and in reply to the toast of 
" Prosperity and continued life," Mr. Cogswell 
read a beautiful address, which sank deep into 
all our hearts. As a narrative of the occasion, 
and copies of the address, circulated only among 
the participants of that better than festive meet- 
ing, we venture to quote a few of Mr. Cogs- 
well's words ; — 



ROUND-EILL SCHOOL. 45 

" I looked upon a meeting with so many pupils of 
long-bygone days as a patriarch of old must have 
looked upon the gathering around him of his children 
at the close of life ; and could make but one answer 
to your filial message : ' It is enough ; I will go and 
see them before I die.' The banner under which you 
have rallied is that of Round Hill ; and for me there 
is magic in that word. The instant it falls upon my 
ears, my sluggish blood regains its youthful warmth 
and quickness, and I am carried back to the time when 
I stood in loco parentis to as fine and quite as numer- 
ous a family as ever patriarch of old was blessed with. 

" I am confident of an affirmative response from all 
present, when I say that Round Hill is still a hallowed 
spot, — hallowed, I mean, in its recollections ; although, 
in its material character, it is profaned to ordinary pur- 
poses: but its name remains; and that must bring 
back so many scenes and incidents of your joyous 
youth, it must ever be dear to you. Once more, dear 
boys, I give you all a most cordial and affectionate 
greeting. We can look back upon our past without re- 
proach or heart-burnings. The rebellions in our little 
commonwealth have all long been forgotten, and the 
instances of supposed injustice to the rebellious, I trust, 
long since forgiven. God bless you, all and every one 
who bears the name of ' Round-Hiller,' wherever he 
may be, even if among the rebels to our country." 

Soon the surviving scholars of Mr. Cogswell 
will assemble in the cemetery of old Ipswich, 
the town of his nativity, already so dignified by 



46 A SHEAF OP PAPERS. 

the humble but historic gravestones which can 
be found there, to look at a simple monument 
to his memory. It is a polished sarcophagus 
of Aberdeen granite ; on the one side bearing 
his name, — 

"Joseph Green Cogswell, 

Born at Ipswich, Sept. 27, 1786, 
Died at Cambridge, Nov. 26, 1871 : " 

on the other side, the lines, — 

"Erected by pupils of Round-IIill School, 
Northampton, Mass. ; " 

and above, — 

" In affectionate remembrance." 

As they look across that grave, from the 
sunset of their lives, they will see, through the 
interval of years, bright with success or dark 
with sorrow and bereavement, their old mas- 
ter, their old school-days, themselves, moving 
through the dilation of the crimson mists of 
morning. Every thing then will be idealized ; 
and that unfulfilled promise, which earth cannot 
keep, may be to them dearer than the conquests 
which years have won for them, or the fugitive 
successes of life's arena. As they once looked 
forward, so will they now look back. 



BOUND-HILL SCHOOL. 47 

FORWARD AND BACKWARD 

The eager boy in fancy sees 

Inviting, from his cloistered youth, 
A world of bright realities, 

Gold unalloyed, and crystal truth. 

He burns to turn the glittering page, 
To taste that cup which mantles fair; 

Nor learns, till taught by cynic Age, 
How false such bright perfections are. 

Then he looks back from clouded years, 
And sees his boyhood's golden dawn, 

To find, through reconciling tears. 

There the missed joy of years forlorn. 

There was the world his fancy sought, 

And that the ideal happiness ; 
So, bright its sacred glow is brought 

From the boy's sunrise even to this. 



i 



48 A SHEAF OF PAPERS, 



THE TWO MONKS. 

TN one of the mountainous districts of Spain a 
monastery was situated. Its towering masses 
of stone and irregular arches harmonized well 
with the scene. Fantastic peaks and broken 
cliffs seemed its brothers. It overlooked what 
in Spain may be considered a rich and verdant 
valley. The garden of the monast^y, carefully 
cultivated, with its broad parterres and silent 
flowers, was but a repetition of the more gra- 
cious moods of the ascetic inhabitants, as silent 
and imprisoned as they, and, when compared 
with the wild profusion of flowers and bushes 
beyond, harmonious with their lives. Through 
it — a thing rare in Spain — danced and fluttered 
a brook, which, under a low arch in the wall, 
shot from the precipice outside the garden, and 
made a murmur which the summer loved. Upon 
a bench, under flowering shrubs, sat two monks 
— the one young, the other older — in tranquil 
conversation. It was June, so profuse in its 
richness in Southern climes ; and twilight solem- 
nized their spirits. The face of the elder monk 



THE TWO MONKS. 49 

showed that not all the severities of his training 
could extinguish a human and happy expression 
which it would cheer one to contemplate. And, 
though encouragement and hope danced in his 
eyes, there gathered about his scantly-furnished 
temples lines which only wisdom and piety could 
have wrought. His whole appearance inspired 
respect and confidence. 

The younger, with his face bent towards the 
earth, had in his saturnine and concentrated 
aspect something the reverse of this. Their 
contrast of temperament as well as years may 
have had to do with their friendship. They mut- 
ually sought each other ; while the natural lan- 
guage of their spirits was in absolute opposition. 

Their broken conversation, after a pause, was 
resumed. 

" No, indeed ! " said the younger. " I can see 
nothing in life but a desperate, almost hopeless 
arena, where sin and evil always triumph over 
good. In vain do we shut ourselves in these 
solitudes ; in vain are temptation and the world 
excluded: the heart, corrupt and sinful at its 
source, peoples the mind with images of ill which 
the convent would vainly exclude. There is a 
mystery of unhappiness given to us, the torture 
of the day and night, an answer to which neither 

3 D 



50 A SHEAF OF PAPERS. 

fasting nor prayer can win. The very picture 
of innocence and sinlessness but deepens the 
shadows I see. Over the fair and shining land- 
scape beyond our walls, rests for ever what stains 
the sunshine, — a trail of woe which destroys 
the brightness of all. We must, through torture 
and tears, expiate the inevitable past. If, here 
and there, a soul is saved to its Maker, his pur- 
pose will be fulfilled. This thought accompanies 
my rising in the morning and repose at night. 
When I look from the window of my cell, 
through the midnight hours, a thousand points 
of flame from the multitude of stars burn into 
me with despair ; and, along the morning mist 
which robes our valley in silver, floats a per- 
petual remembrance of the imperfection of man, 
to kill even the freshness and the beauty of the 
dawn. 

" Why is it that man can picture to himself a 
purity to which he cannot attain ? Why is it 
that the parcel of good that he possesses but 
serves to make him keener to apprehend the 
universal wickedness of his kind ? " 

"Enough of this," replied the other with a 
smile ; " a truce to your black imaginations ! 
How often have I not told you that you make 
the world that you see, and that the world that 



THE TWO MONKS. 51 

is, is not the black one that you think it ! By 
indulgence, you drown your soul in shadows; 
by surrender to despair, you destroy that hope 
which is the star of man's life. No good can 
come of such forced contrasts as your picture 
gives. There the light only insults the shadow 
in irreconcilable antagonism ; but it should not 
be so. God is good, the kind Father of us all ; 
and his world is a miracle of splendor and hap- 
piness. And this law of opposition which ago- 
nizes you is the perpetual balance of wholesome 
parts, whose whole we see so contrasted in every 
thing. Does not the light of the sunshine make 
the shadow? But is the shadow criminal for 
that? Are not day and night, heat and cold, 
laughter and tears, yes, and life and death, parts 
of one excellent and God-given reality? Is 
there any thing which is not set off by its oppo- 
sition ? and is not that opposition the bond of 
mutual service ? Are not these twin forces 
needed for completeness? Is the furnace-heat 
of Africa, unmitigated by winter, the best friend 
of the flower, or the streamlet that feeds the 
flower? Is the night, which brings blackness 
and ghostly visions, without its refreshment for 
the toiling man through the day succeeding? 
Nay, did the Saviour himself, that white beam 



62 A SHEAF OF PAPERS, 

from the throne of the Most High, — did he seek 
the pure and perfect only ? and did he recognize 
as a friend and helper no abject sinner or self- 
condemning sufferer? Will jou never learn 
confidence and cheer of the patient and peaceful 
creatures which people the forest, where even 
those of rapine and violence seem to bear a com- 
mission which prevents the loss of their inno- 
cence? Do not the birds in yonder tree, the 
direct voice of Nature, find a well-spring of joy 
and gayety in their little bosoms, whose reservoir 
is afar in the divine instincts, which should find 
conduits also to your breast? Do the golden 
and ruby clouds which drape the departing 
monarch of the day deepen round his setting 
with hopelessness and gloom; or does theii* 
beauty predict the triumphs of the eastern 
dawn? Does it not make man feel that he has 
a heavenly Friend, who, if invisible, and lost for 
a time, is really our Friend, and will not desert 
us? 

" I hardly dare say to you that the sin which 
conscience and the church condemn may be but 
a part of a whole, which sinlessness could never 
make ; that in its mystery may be hidden a 
good for man which after-days may show. The 
struggle in its coils may give that muscle and 



TEE TWO MONKS. 53 

strength to the soul without which it would be 
but an insipid thing. Its very universality, too, 
instead of bowing you with anguish and despair, 
should be a comfort and a ground of confidence ; 
for, after all, God made his creature, and not he 
himself. We but use what we find. The sin 
of Adam, which, like a tide, has washed out in- 
nocence, must have been a part of the deity's 
intention, or it is a defeated world. It is not 
the world of the God of love, but of the ser- 
pent, and of evil. 

" I believe, with all the confidence of hope, 
which plants firmly its foot amid a celestial fut- 
ure, that all must work together for good. Not 
that I fail to deplore the shortcomings that I wit- 
ness and that I feel ; but I will not allow the 
shadow to invade my light. Take away from 
me the faith that, behind yon azure, smiles an 
ever-enduring affection and pardon, and I shall 
lose all hold upon Christ and his promises. 

" Beware, if, from the fumes of the dungeon 
where you immure your hope, such clouds of 
blackness shall always envelop the sunshine of 
the earth, lest you shall see the Father's face 
distorted by your own passion, and his fair 
world but a desert and a desolation ! Have a 
care, or, like all untruth, it will loosen your 



54 A SEEAF OF PAPERS. 

hold upon the right, and you will be punished, 
in some way, for adding to the evil already in 
the world by a faith in it which creates rather 
than takes it away ! " 

Turning his eyes upon his companion, he 
beheld him sunk in dreary silence. In his as- 
pect was the hard, set, unforgiving look which 
the mournful Spanish Christians may have else- 
where beheld at autos-da-fe, or the Moor have 
witnessed with pathetic sympathy upon the 
convulsed features of an Ignatius Loyola. 

" Dear friend, I love you, and you know it," 
with his face still bent to the earth, at last an- 
swered the younger. "But I cannot see the 
world as you see it. The splendor of evening 
has a sorrow in it, as if the clouds were dyed in 
blood, and that the blood of a Saviour whom 
man chooses to forget. In the aimless piping 
of the birds, and the fitful melody of rivulets, 
I but recognize a meaningless and accidental 
delight, not meant by themselves, and not in- 
tended to diminish our griefs. The hard and 
lifeless desert, the arid precipice, the bramble, 
and the thistle, are truer growths from an earth 
nourished by sin. Even your valued words of 
confidence and hope seem to me but the gayety 
of a happy temperament, which, in obedience to 



THE TWO MONKS. 55 

its emotions, is unwilling to face realities, and 
to give itself the pain of acknowledging the 
truth. There is something almost sadder than 
all in those tones of happiness and hope, where 
all is lost." 

As the night deepened, the face of the one 
seemed to catch from the shadow a more myste- 
rious and appalling depth of expression ; while 
on the other, amid the darkness, serene and 
peaceful, seemed yet to linger the sunset light 
which was gone behind the hills. 

With the coming night, the flowers tossed to 
them a richer perfume than belonged to the 
day. To the one, they but struck upon the 
sense as a wound and an insult ; to the other, 
the mystery of their appeal found fellowship 
with the long train of ambrosial hopes, and 
mingled with the censers swinging in the celes- 
tial city. The brook, too, now invisible, had a 
voice which the day denied. To one its wave 
bore only the burden of " Sorrow and sorrow 
for ever," — a monotone of despair; to the other 
there was exultation in the shock and hurry of 
its waters, and it seemed to look forward to the 
world beyond the convent- walls without fear or 
regret. And the nightingale added itself to 
this music, and gave a soul to all things. Its 



A SHEAF OF PAPERS. 

melancholy, which is so absolute that it might 
wring the heart of the sufferer, the elder found 
but to conceal, as behind the grief of his own 
soul, a faith in brightness and joy which both 
needed. 

They rose to go, and silently paced to the 
doors of their cells, which were side by side, and 
overlooked the noble landscape. As they faced 
each other with a parting salute, the elder said 
to the younger, "My son, I say to you again, 
beware of blackening the brightness of God's 
world. Seeing it as you prefer to see it, you do 
not deserve its sunshine, its verdure, the glory 
of its flowers, and the pathless purity of its 
azure. Try to see more truly, or you, at last, 
will behold but blackness. Good -night, and 
God bless you ! " 



The younger monk entered his cell. There 
the habit of his thought, which was sent back to 
him from every bare wall and his narrow bed, 
but deepened his gloom. His heart was hard 
and faithless. By the light of his taper, which 
fell in tremulous touches upon the agonizing 
Christ of a small crucifix, he prayed; but his 
prayer had no hope in it. The heart accorded 
not with the words of his breviary. He 



THE TWO MONKS. 57 

thought not of his Father, but of a Judge and 
a Tyrant. Before retiring, he moved to hLs 
narrow window, which overlooked the glorious 
valley. 

The moon was at its full, and poured upon 
olive-grove and tamarisk, upon beetling cliffs 
and the rejoicing brook, in little rivulets of sil- 
ver, which flooded every thing with peace and 
mj'^stery ; but to him it was an accusing blank, 
and the moon but a scared witness of the hell 
which man had made of earth. With a groan, 
he covered himself with his scanty bedclothes, 
and for long vainly invited sleep. "When it 
came, it was but a tumult of terrifying forms, 
a spectral procession of men and monsters ; and 
in every eye the demon glared. But at last he 
slept. 

When he awoke, with a sigh, he found the 
morning was advanced ; and he flew to the win- 
dow to distinguish the houi\ There he fell 
back with a shudder. After bathing his eyes 
in water and cctnsulting his pulse, he returned 
to the window to discover if what he saw were 
not a hideous dream. But there it was. His 
punishment had overtaken him. The world 
from which he had driven joy and brightness, 
the sunshine he had denied, withheld their 



58 A SHEAF OF PAPERS. 

glory. In his despair lie cried aloud. The 
very light of the landscape was without its 
smile, — rather the absence of darkness than 
light ; for the sun withheld his gold. Every 
object, according to its distance, was defined 
with colorless distinctness. The nearer trees 
held to him their little disks of ebony ; and the 
farther groups, the plunging shadows of the 
precipices, nay, even the flowers of his garden 
beneath his eye, were all dark as night. The 
very brook had but a wan sparkle on its fleeting 
surface, which looked like a waving hank of 
gray wool. The reader can best apprehend 
what he saw by looking at the dusky photo- 
graphs of scenes he may have beheld, where all 
is black and white, as if it were the funeral of 
the world he had known so bright. But he 
who sees the photograph knows that it only 
renders the scene in chiaroscuro^ which really 
lives flooded with sunshine, and palpitating 
with beauty. The young monk beheld the 
abdication of Nature herself,, with all which 
should encourage man to hope and love, and 
in its place a blackness, as of the tomb, in which 
all human trust dies. 

Even he was repelled by what he saw. It 
seemed to him that even the greatness of man's 



THE TWO MONKS. 59 

sin scarcely merited so terrible a retribution as 
this. From his groaning heart there fell, as it 
were, a load ; and a longing for sweetness and 
life, of which he would not have thought him- 
self capable, brought the tears to his eyes. His 
agony, like the rod of Moses, had struck his 
rocky heart, which softened in the beneficent 
waters. While his tears obscured the land- 
scape, it danced with the movement of life 
through the lens of his sorrow. 

Drawing his hood over his face, he flew to 
the cell of his friend, the elder monk, who re- 
ceived him with 'a look dehonnair and smiling ; 
but his face fell as he witnessed his brother's 
grief. It was a glorious morning ; but vainly 
did he point to the purple distance, the emerald 
woodland, the sapphire sky ; his brother could 
see there neither beauty nor color. 

" Thou art punished, my son ; and it is thy 
punishment to see the world as thou hast pict- 
ured it to thyself, — the scene of God's wrath, 
and not of his mercy. Thou hast denied its 
beauty as its lovableness ; and now they are 
both taken away from it. Dost thou not see 
the great error of thy condemnation of what he 
had not condemned ? Art thou holier than 
God? By much fasting and many prayers 



Tapebs. 



must thy spirit seek expiation of thy wrong ; 
and he who forgives the lowest and most abject 
will pardon thee. Surrender thyself to God 
and his goodness." 

All day long the young monk, in the silence 
of his cell, sought pardon for his sin, with 
shocks of repentant agony. With tears that 
streamed in penitential fulness, he sought to 
recover the world and the Father he had lost. 
The tears eased his pain, and in the dissolution 
of his former being were borne out, as to the 
main, the fragments of his strong affections, — 
the veil of iron which he had placed between 
his eye and the brightness of heaven. 

The whole day was passed by him in his cell. 
He dared not visit the garden of the monastery, 
where every tree and flower would have been 
his accuser ; but he felt through his open win- 
dow a breath as of comfort and pardon. As a 
mother hangs with a caress above her dreaming 
child, and the balm of her breath loosens the 
unrest about its heart, so that breath, from an 
earth not all sinful, sighed towards him with a 
mother's tenderness. 

He avoided the friend who had reproved him, 
nor appeared at the refectory, where his distress 
might have drawn to him the indiscreet notice 



I 



THE TWO MONKS. 61 

of the other monks; but in prayer, and with 
sobs of contrition, the slow hours of the day 
wore themselves away. 

He retired early to rest, where a soothing 
slumber held him in its arms, and clouds of 
smiling angels — a white and heavenly train — 
looked down upon him with love and encour- 
agement. 

He awoke ; and as he opened his eyes, he 
seemed to see flooding past his narrow window 
a sea of glory. The burden had fallen from his 
spirit. He hurried to gaze upon the landscape 
which he had for so long unlovingly beheld, and 
to bow before the nature which its Author had 
bestowed upon his children, not for their humil- 
iation or chastisement, but to remind them of 
him, and to beckon them forward to other and 
even brighter displays of his power. The young 
monk hung in ecstasy from the bars of his lat- 
tice, and almost feared to fall, in his yearning 
to mingle in the universal matin song of devo- 
tion and joy. The sun was there an apparent 
god, — God's delegate and material representa- 
tive; and, wherever its smile fell, creation was 
ennobled. All life was marked by his signet. 
No lowly bush, no aspiring pinnacle, but wore 
upon its front an aureole of beauty. The sky 



62 A SHEAF OF PAPEHS. 

dilated and pulsed as through its sea of ether 
the kindling messengers went by. 

Below, the clustering familiar trees, the hum- 
bler shrubs, the flowers, again to him wearing 
their coats of many colors, all bowed and tossed 
themselves as in exultation and delight. The 
little brook sounded its reveille to the blushing 
firmament, and danced and carolled as a thing 
which could know no doubt or defeat of hope. 
Its mist of silver from the cascade beyond rose 
and wavered past the shadowy garden- wall, and 
died in blessings among the growing things 
which loved it. 

The young monk stood for an hour, drinking 
in with gratitude the beauty of a world he had 
recovered, till his thirst for the visible goodness 
he now found in every thing was fully slaked ; 
and then, after a devout thanksgiving for the 
love which had not hardened itself because of 
his sin, he rose from his knees, to share with Jiis 
more fortunate friend, the elder monk, the ful- 
ness of the joy which now almost overburdened 
his heart. 



A LEAP FROM A JOURNAL. 63 



A LEAF FROM A JOURNAL. 

France, 1834. 

''T^HE world moves so swiftly now, that traces 
^ of the past are day by day obliterated : like 
the revolving circle of colors, our speed only 
shows us white, where, in slower days, were 
seen all the hues of the rainbow. The angel of 
commonplace and equality was hidden in the 
vapor of the first locomotive. Before its breath, 
melted, like frost-work, the old provincial cus- 
toms, the quaint mediaeval habits, the odd cor- 
ners and angles in human nature. A sketch 
of a visit to Picardy in 1834, and a little later, 
paints country life in tints which seem remoter 
than that date. 

Gliding along under a Mediterranean sun, I 
was making, with the dreamy activity of the 
traveller, a sketch of a picturesque person in 
the steamer which was carrying me from Civita 
Vecchia to Marseilles. My subject was an alert, 
active Frenchman, with a flat travelling casquette, 



64 A SHEAF OF PAPERS. 

and a ribbon at his button-hole, which, somehow, 
seemed to have been won in imperial days, and 
on the field of battle. Such proved afterwards 
to be the case. That blood-red token has gone 
on, dingier and duller, till now it no longer rep- 
resents France and her glory, but stands for the 
cheapness of court favor, any form of success, 
to which even a grocer may aspire. 

As I was finishing my sketch, a voice above 
me said, " You did it at a disadvantage : I will 
pose in any position you like, so that you may 
get a better likeness." After a fashion, a tolera- 
ble likeness was accomplished. This led to that 
easy acquaintance and fellowship so natural to un- 
occupied minds, when congenial. After gushes 
of confidence from the Baron de Neuilly, for 
such he was, as to the life left behind in Italy, 
its horse-races, religious services, and flirtations, 
pleasantly mingled, the baron exclaimed, as if 
struck with a sudden idea, " Since we suffer so 
severely, both of us, from sea-sickness " — 

" Speak for yourself, monsieur," said I. " I 
am always well." 

" Do not interrupt me. Suffering as we do, I 
think it will be a good thing for us to leave our 
luggage with my servant, in the steamer, and go 
in my caleche by the Cornice to Paris." 



A LEAF FROM A JOURNAL-. Qb 

We disembarked at Genoa, and went forward 
by land accordingly. I had never before heard 
of the Cornice, fortunately for me : its beauty 
had been fehcitously kept a secret. It was 
April. O, that drive ! " Give me youth and a 
day," says Emerson, "and I will make the pomp 
of emperors ridiculous." 

This lovely coast, where our post-horses ran 
on a narrow ledge, smooth as a floor, with preci- 
pices and summits towering above us, scalloped 
into little indenting bays, each with its village as 
a centre, made every moment a surprise. As the 
shore runs towards the north, the sunshine is 
caught within a cup ; and thereby the flavor of 
the south is doubled in intensity. Curving into 
every bay, spread beyond every headland, was 
the sea, a great floor of lapis lazuli, unravaged 
by tempest, and only veined with white when the 
creamy breaker broke against a rock or headland. 
Here and there were palms, sealing, as they do 
for South Carohna, the tropic south. 

Our steamer disembarked at Marseilles our 
trunks, which we had left on board, in charge 
of the baron's servant, intending to recover 
them here. Filled — as mine were at least — 
with the winter's spoils of travel, in cameo, lava, 
and coral, I entered the custom-house with some 



^6 A SHEAF OF PAPEBS. 

anxiety. The official, towering in meridional 
wrath, said, in reply to my inquiry, " If that's 
your trunk, and it isn't removed within an hour, 
it shall be sent to Paris ! " So my keys slept in 
my pocket. 

This ride was the poetry of our journey. We 
dashed across France, trying in Burgundy, as 
the accomplished baron insisted, the simple and 
cheap cms of the country, to test his statement, 
that this native wine has a flavor of the soil, and 
a homely merit of its own, which, cheap as it 
is, does not bear transportation to Paris ; going 
twenty miles out of our way to M^lun, to try 
its famous eels, about which, with the amusing 
foolishness of some proverbs, it is said, — 

" II crie comme toutes les anguilles de Melun." 

Finally, Paris was reached ; then, for the first 
time, I really heard French. The grace and 
charm of it as spoken by the family into which I 
was introduced I had previously no idea of. The 
accent or the phrasing, I knew not which, seemed 
to glide and sparkle, suggestive of fun and wit 
where English words would have been simply 
insipid. And the pretty, old-fashioned, friendly, 
family ways ! the demonstrativeness, as poor An- 
glo-Saxons, deprived of flowers of Celtic sen- 



A LEAF FROM A JOURNAL. 67 

timent, call it, — it was delightful. Games in 
the evening, whose childishness would have re- 
pelled a Briton ; dances in which old and young 
shared, their only raison d'etre being the sunny 
cheerfulness by which they moved ; amusing 
talk with the duke, for there was a duke in the 
centre of the circle, who, in the house of peers, 
led the Carlist chivalry of France, — these were 
all novelties to me, freshly delightful, and justly 
seeming the fair spoil of travel. 

At that time Lafayette died. With a digni- 
fied wave of his hand, my duke permitted me, 
as an American, to join the funeral cortege. 

" The most dangerous man in France," he 
said, " and he is well laid away in his family 
vault in the Picpus graveyard. With him lies 
buried the republic ; and in America, even, you 
will soon be of our opinion, and desire the dig- 
nity and comfort of a monarchy." 

With the warm weather came preparations of 
departure. The old family herline^ odd in form, 
and deep in its receptive capacity, with its huge 
chintz flowers on a white ground for a lining, 
looked ancient as the Crusades. But before the 
family retired to the chdteau at Joli Pr^, the 
lovely daughter-in-law of the duke said, " Papa, 



68 



A SEEAF OF PAPERS, 



lend our friend your medal as a peer. He is one 
of those unfortunate Americans who consider it 
their duty to contemplate and appreciate all the 
monuments of Paris, not omitting any one. One 
of them was seen, the other day, asking admis- 
sion to the interior of the Obelisk of Luxor. In 
a week, if you want to know your Paris, our 
friend will be able to give you details which 
your long life ~ here has not yet supplied." 

I took the little gold medal, and found it a 
talisman indeed. Before its spell went down 
every bar and barrier between me and the 
choicest wonders of Paris. It admitted me to 
a day at the Exposition sacred to the royal 
family. That family must have thought its 
memory bad, owing to the difficulty of recogniz- 
ing which of the French dukes I might be. But 
I gave their gracious majesties a wide berth, 
knowing that, in the secure quiet of a mon- 
archy, a too near stranger might pass for an 
assassin, and respected the dreary plight of roy- 
alty so circumstanced. 

One place in Paris baffled me, — the conoier- 
gerie. Its jailer protested that no nobleman of 
France even, without the proper written order, 
could be admitted. I respected him for the 
surly solitude of his guardianship. What a dif- 



A LEAF FROM A JOURNAL. 69 

ference that little bit of paper made I Not only 
with it could I have been admitted where a duke 
could not be ; but its authority, when presented 
by Marie Antoinette, discharged the recipient of 
every feeling of goodness and charity, giving her 
not only an entrance, but, so soon after, a swift 
and bloody exit. 

Not content with slaughtering the lions of 
Paris, and ravaging its monuments, I extended 
my excursions to all the palaces and prisons 
within leagues around. Made careless by my 
success, at Bicetre, where there is a double build- 
ing for prisoners and the insane, I demanded to 
visit the interior of the insane asylum. "It is 
impossible," replied the officer at his desk, — for 
public functionaries here either carry the sword, 
or should do so, — a military government, a mili- 
tary race, taking the mot d'ordres from above, 
and showing everywhere the spirit of a camp. 
As insolence to an officer used to be punished 
by death, so* the instant Latin feeling of des- 
peration, when dealing with liberal ideas, comes 
from the confusion perhaps of rulers with of- 
ficers. Why, the very trees along the road- 
sides of France range themselves in military 
fashion, in orderly lines ; and if they are pop- 
lars, as is so often the case, seem only the proto- 



70 A SHEAF OF PAPERS. 

plasms of grenadiers revived in a vegetable form : 
the broad, strong chaussees seem made for hurl- 
ing forth to battle masses of cavalry and artillery. 

Putting my hand into my waistcoat pocket 
with the confidence of a conjurer, smiling, I said 
to him, " I think I have that here which will in- 
duce you to change your opinion." Starting up 
like a Jack-in-a-box, and mechanically twirling 
his formidable mustachios, " How dare you," 
said he, " insult an officer of France by the offer 
of money ! " 

To which I ingeniously and instantly replied, 
" And how dare you suggest that I propose such' 
an insult! Deign to cast your eye over that 
ducal medal." He instantly collapsed, and ap- 
pointed a couple of soldiers to show me to the 
mad-house of my wishes. 

A fortnight after my new friends had left 
Paris for Picardy I followed them. My vehicle 
was the old-fashioned diligence. Any one who 
has ever seen it may well believe in the sea-ser- 
pent, both are of such saurian prehistoric pro- 
portions ; indeed, their extinction must have 
occurred at about the same time. A diligence is 
a travelling town, a slice of society, well marked 
off into its different compartments. First, there 
is the coupe^ with a fine view of the apples on 



A LEAF FROM A JOURNAL. 71 

the haunches of the cumbrous percherons who 
pull the carriage with rope-harness at variable 
distances from each other. In the coupe go the 
gentry ; then comes the interieur ; behind all is 
the rotonde, with its Parthian glimpse of the road ; 
but to the enthusiastic young traveller, the ban- 
quette, a perch near the clouds, where one hud- 
dles under a leather arch, among straw and 
luggage, is the favorite place, there is so much 
air, and such glorious views. 

In the interieur 1 had the bad luck to find my- 
self. It was filled with Norman nurses, glitter- 
ing with golden ear-rings and snowy caps, of a 
robustness which it would do Dr. Clarke good 
to contemplate. I revenged myself upon the 
diffusive familiarity of an infant and his nurse 
by sketching them. At the last stop before 
reaching the chateau, I was accommodated with 
a country wagon all to myself, which gave an air 
of property to my method of arrival. 

I was expected, and soon, amid a lovely broken 
country, driving past a charming lake close to the 
house, and a pigevnnier with its circling pigeons, 
that indispensable adjunct of a cMteau, I arrived, 
and was received literally with open arms ; the 
gentlemen kissing me as if we were all boarding- 
school girls. Immediately I was taken to my 



72 A SHEAF OF PAPERS. 

bedroom, overlooking the lake and the pretty 
indentations of a neighboring forest, which ran 
indeed in a circle almost round the house ; for 
the baron's forest interlocked with the king's. 
This great extent of wood allowed it to be the 
haunt of the wild boar and the chevreuil^ the 
chase of which is one of the great advantages 
the baron has. When my scanty wardrobe was 
allowed to unstiffen itself in roomy drawers, and 
when the servant who came with us from Italy 
had taken my orders for little details of comfort, 
the baron carried me to his sanctum. There the 
hure, or boar's head, was everywhere conspicu- 
ous. It was surrounded by appropriate weapons 
of the chase, interspersed with aquarelles, family 
sketches, and souvenirs of the Bourbons. The 
Duchess of Berri was at that time a load-star to 
the Carlist youth, on account of her misfortunes, 
and her bravery at the time of her capture. She 
had, with an adherent, the pluck to stay behind 
the fireplace, where she was hidden, till she could 
bear it no longer, when she surrendered. 

There was a fine air of foolish chivalry, the 
aroma fi'om the dead days of loyalty, still hang- 
ing round the chdteau. One felt, on hearing 
the talk, how ill suited to our day were these 
ideas, and how improbable their return to power. 



A LEAF FROM A JOURNAL. 73 

The company assembled at the chdteau was of 
the most contrasting character. There was the 
fattore, as the Italians call him, the country 
manager of the estate, a scion of one of the 
noblest houses of France, whose lovely wife still 
lives immortalized as Ecclesia, " the Church," in 
De la Roche's famous Semicycle., and her sister, 
both daughters of the baron. There was their 
governess, one of those sweet, pure natures once 
not infrequent in France, and breathing memo- 
ries of F^n^lon. There was an artist, a sculptor, 
who, on wet days, would work on a little statu- 
ette of the baron's daughter, and who, when not 
employed, would have a look of wisdom which 
deceived me, till the baron explained, " II r^ve 
creux," to imply the emptiness of his thinking. 
Then there was a volatile, Frenchified Scotch- 
man, much preferring the sun of the boulevard 
to the mists of any of the heroes of Ossian. To 
him I frequently confided how superior in at- 
tractiveness I found this chdteau life to the 
somewhat damp and heavy cheer of an English 
country-house. Here the great characteristic 
was ease, impromptu sallies, and the determina- 
tion of all to be sunny. 

Very soon the baron announced his programme 
for the hours and days of the ensuing fortnight, 



74 A SHEAF OF PAPERS. 

which was often changed as new combinations 
or the weather interfered. All plans were sub- 
ject to the wishes of the duchess, who was to 
arrive in a few days. What delightful excur- 
sions we had ! Additional visitors came, male 
and female ; superb horses crowded the moder- 
ately-sized stables. Whether in the saddle, or 
on foot, I know not which was the pleasanter 
exercise. Sometimes we made excursions to the 
cMteaux of the neighboring nobles, spending the 
night with them, and returning the next day ; 
sometimes we would go off to picnic in the ruins 
of a monastery near by, or to visit Laon, where 
four stone oxen look down from the top of the 
bulky tower, itself on a hill, and overlooking a 
prodigious tract of country. It seemed odd to 
find that this cathedral was built by John Bull, 
and these stone oxen of his so honored for the 
labor of fetching the stone blocks up the ac- 
clivity. The snug hotel at Laon had for its sign 
a hure^ or boar's head, locally appropriate. At 
St. Quentin and St. Gobin, we were shown the 
beautiful manufactures of the famous mirrors 
which Frenchmen so dearly love. When fresh 
from the furnace, they look like buckwheat 
cakes ; afterwards polish, water and pumice, and 
mutual attrition, begin what emery finishes. 



A LEAF FROM A JOURNAL. 75 

But the most charming point of excursion 
frequently visited was the Chateau de Couci. 
France has no nobler ruin. Its extensive walls 
cover the crest of a bold eminence, which over- 
looks leagues of distance ; and its principal and 
gigantic tower has been split from top to bottom, 
most picturesquely, by an earthquake. But it 
is entire ; and inside may be seen the rich colors 
of the ancient frescos, and mediaeval figures. 
Somewhere, somehow, a Sire de Couci killed a 
lion. The story goes, it was near the castle. 
If so, it must have escaped from some mediaeval 
Barnum. But, over the principal archway, he 
ramps in stone for ever. 

All France knows the legend of the Couci 
race : — 

" Ni roi je suis, ni prince aussi, 
Mais le sire de Couci ; " 

and there is a story from the days of the Cru- 
sades as widely known. A cousin or nephew of 
the chatelaine loved his mistress ; and the haughty 
husband, discovering it, had him waylaid as he 
returned from successful war with the infidels, 
and slain. His heart, served upon the table of 
the chdteauy was partaken of by the chdtelaine. 

" You always liked it," said the wicked Sire 
de Couci: "it is your lover's heart." "Since 



76 A SHEAF OF PAPERS. 

such meat has passed my lips," she replied, "no 
other earthly food befits me;" and she died of 
starvation and a broken spirit. 

To this chdteau we would make sketching- 
parties, for it was near the house ; arriving 
home late, after jumping and sometimes falling 
into swollen brooks, draggled and delighted, to 
the sweet freshness of clean clothes, a late and 
relished dinner, and then the slipper and the 
cigar, which make twilight holy. When not 
too tired, we would dance severe and formal 
minuets, or spin in the modern friskiness of the 
waltz. Billiards were never forgotten ; and the 
duchess, who soon arrived, proved to be a cool 
hand with a cue, and hard to beat. Women 
should always aim at using the cue, it is so 
much more graceful and worthy of the game, 
and never the foolish and inefficient mace. 

It was great fun to have one of the small 
lakes drawn. It reminded one of Watteau ; 
the pretty women, with their scarfs and parasols, 
looking down upon the picturesque and slimy 
men who were doing the dragging. Eels were 
taken in abundance, and carp, a truly mediaeval 
fish, with its great golden scales, its hundred 
years of life, and sometimes bearing in its nose 
a courtly ring of other days and other manners. 



A LEAF FBOM A JOURNAL. 7T 

The baron's chdteau was a modern house, and 
he and his set were moderns in their ways and 
manners ; but scattered about the country were 
residences which we sometimes visited, where 
the flavor of the old provincial life was still rich 
and strong. One quaint old chdteau had for its 
occupants a couple of maiden sisters, who lived 
in a union closer than that of the Siamese twins, 
for their bond was spiritual, and not of the flesh : 
their thoughts, their pleasures, their daily life, 
so united, it was like a double existence. I had 
expected with curiosity to see them ; but, unfor- 
tunately, when we visited them, one for two 
days had been seriously ill ; and now her sister 
had taken also to her bed, compelled by that 
sympathy which made them do every thing in 
common. They were thus both almost helpless. 
Though a rain was coming on, the kind-hearted 
baron took a horse from the stable, and galloped 
furiously fifteen miles to get them a physician , 
I, in the mean time, was driven home in our 
dennet by a servant of the house. 

One landed proprietor whom we visited was 
loud in his denunciation of the vandalism of re- 
publican ways. Showing me a lovely view that 
he had opened through a wood, which gave 
glimpses of a lake, and, beyond, of a Roman 
tumulus^ he passionately exclaimed, — 



78 A SHEAF OF PAPERS, 

" What avail such affectionate labors for one's 
property, when the law divides among all one's 
descendants the estate, so that nothing can be 
kept up ! Everywhere the old manorial glories 
of France are fast disappearing. In fifty years 
what will have become of my bosquet^ my arti- 
ficial lake, and even of my Roman tumulus I " 

One did, indeed, feel, behind the aggressive re- 
publicanism in the air, something of the country 
life of Madame de Sevignd and Louis XIV. 
The Duchess of O^reste, as well as Madame de 
Coulanges, her visitor, had indescribable touches, 
in her manner, of feudal days ; and her wit and 
hons mots were reported through all the country. 

The interest of the duke in a gold eagle which 
I had, and presented him, was almost childish ; 
and his '•'• Biable ! ''^ rang through the room as if 
he had seen the living bird. Indeed, the igno- 
rance of the French then, as to every thing 
American, was absolute ; and on one occasion, 
tempted by the easy opportunity for chaff, I 
ventured to draw the long-bow in a manner 
which even Cyrus would have approved. I can- 
not say as much for his other precept, the truth. 
In fact, this tale was a bouncer. 

Happening to have really a distant relative 
married to an Indian chief, I mentioned it. The 



A LEAF FROM A JOURNAL. 79 

question was asked, " In intermarriages with the 
Indians, do you take their name, or retain your 
own?" I said, that, as their lands were falling 
daily to us by the luck of the stronger, it was 
thought graceful invariably to accept the Indian 
nomenclature. " C'est bien ! " exclaimed my au- 
dience : " c'est gracieux ! " " Unfortunately," 
said I, " though I do not like to mention it, they 
were Caribs, you know." 

"Indeed; what is that?" 

" A tribe that has always had the bad habit of 
eating its prisoners. Though of this stock, I in- 
variably refuse the indulgence of so bad a pro- 
pensity ; but I must confess to a longing to do 
so." They loudly exclaimed, " C'est bien, c'est 
bien ! il ne faut pas manger son semblable ! "^ 

After this, the moon-struck artist attached 
himself to my steps. One day I was sketching a 
little artificial island, when I suddenly discovered 
that I had left my pencil-box where I had last 
sketched, and started up to recover it ; where- 
upon my watchful sculptor flew to the chateau 
with extended arms, crying out, — 

*' II a eu un acces ! II a eu un acces ! " 

If some of the grander country people sug- 
gested Madame de Sdvign^, others reminded 
one of Eugenie Grandet, and the stuify, close, 



80 A SHEAF OF PAPERS. 

dead existence described by Balzac. A female 
cousin of the baron came to visit us one day in 
the most incredibly rococo and ancient vehicle I 
had ever seen. I do not know what to call it. 
Its name, perhaps, had perished in some vast 
antiquity. The horses, which might have come 
out of the ark, were held to it by the queerest 
straps and ropes. As the baron expected to be, 
and indeed was, her heir, the most deferential 
courtesy awaited her ; but nothing could smooth 
the dry, cold lines of her pinched face. There 
was an odor of old lavender and marjoram about 
her, as if she had come from a clothes-press. 
Twice, robbers had invaded her dark and tum- 
ble-down mansion, but found nothing. Her 
money, which never saw bank, pure louis d^or, 
was known to be hidden away in all undiscover- 
able corners ; and, in fact, the baron, later, on 
hearing of her death, posted down to the country, 
and there successfully rummaged for it in old 
flower-pots, garden-beds, hall-tiles, and the ob- 
scurest crevices, as if he were guessing a conun- 
drum. As it was, he never knew but what the 
visitors had anticipated him, and carried off heavy 
spoils. 

The most picturesque thing of my visit was, 
perhaps, a chevreuil hunt ; though, if I had staid, 



A LEAF FROM A JOURNAL. 81 

I had been promised that grand glory of the 
provinces, a wild-boar hunt ; when, all being in 
appropriate costume, — each wearing boots up 
to the thigh, brilliant hunting-coats (generally 
green or red, with an enormous horn wound 
round them like a ring of Saturn), caps, and a 
short sword by their side, with which to de- 
spatch the boar in close combat, — a brilliant 
scene is presented. 

With the chevreuil we had no great luck, be- 
yond the beauty of the woods, and the excite- 
ment of hope. After waiting at our post, by 
which the deer was to come, an accidental move- 
ment of some one on the line of his flight made 
him swerve through the depths of a valley be- 
yond shot, where we only got glimpses of his 
haunches and branching horns. But to wait an 
hour with something to hope for, in a lovely 
wood, is never time misspent ; and the stillness, 
with the excitement of the senses, brought to 
notice a thousand beauties of variable shadow 
and sunshine, and of the pretty ways of birds, 
made over-bold and near by our statue-like tran- 
quillity. 

Something of this delightful country life in 
France of course remains; but we live in a 
swift age ; and since there, as everywhere, man- 
4* p 



82 A SHEAF OF PAPEBS. 

ners are modified, and antique methods of life 
are displaced, by the flash, brilliancy, and hurry 
of modern civilization, I have thought these 
jottings of French provincial life forty years 
ago worth making. 



'THE Ply on tee wheel. 8S 



THE FLY ON THE WHEEL. 

TDROYERBS, Earl Russell has cleverly said, 
are the wisdom of many and the wit of 
one. There are expressions which are abortive 
proverbs, truncated members of a complete 
statement, which have the salt and pungency 
of proverbs, and serve as such. These pearls 
are left beneath the seas of life, the result of 
its tempest and its sunshine, and many a 
homely oyster secretes them from its expe- 
rience. They are worn as helps as well as 
ornaments, — an amulet as well as a jewel. 

'' The fly on the wheel," " How we apples 
swim," are such expressions, compact with the 
wisdom of the past, and, by condensation, made 
serviceable for posterity. 

He. who first found the expression "The fly 
on the wheel," builded better than he knew. 
He was talking of himself and his race, while 
he thought he was only laughing at the vanity 
of an individual. 

While this great wheel of a world turns 



84 A SHEAF OF PAPEtiS. 

in space, we all enact our parts as flies, and 
take a content in our supposed share of the 
revolution, which in the loftiest instances has 
lured many a haughty conqueror to his doom. 
So far has he advanced with success in the 
direction of the wheel's motion, that, trustful 
that he and the wheel are one, he moves at 
length against it, and is soon brushed off into 
space. 

The recognition of force, beyond the valiancy 
of one's own will, is well illustrated in the Mar- 
blehead story of the boy pursued through the 
garden b}^ an enraged old woman whose clothes- 
lines he had disturbed. As she was on the 
point of clutching him, his companion astride 
the fence cried out, '' Billy, try her on a 
wind." 

He got Nature's powerful help behind him, 
and easily escaped. As long as one rides the 
wave, sails with the current, all things will be 
prosperous ; and fortunate is he who can thus 
"hitch his wagon to a star," and so seem to rep- 
resent in himself the concurrence of the laws 
of Nature. 

The word " will," like the word " personal- 
ity," then becomes a juggle and a deception. 
One chooses because one cannot help it : the 



THE FLY ON THE WHEEL. 85 

choice is pointed out by the imperative instincts 
of necessity and selection. 

And that is mostly the natural relation with 
things, that the man should be the creature 
of his time and race. Even when he overtops 
the rest, and invites to what seem new paths 
of danger, he is only the exponent of the crowd, 
their mouthrpiece and leader. He prophesies 
because he knows, and makes his own prophecy 
true, by using the forces which are friendly and 
not inimical to his new experiments. 

So necessary is this consent of Nature to 
success, that one is almost led to guess that 
at the appointed moment she whispers her 
secret in the ear of the favored discoverer, lo ! 
the steamship, the photograph, the telegraph ai-e 
born. 

The illustrious Morse, when receiving the 
acclaim of Europe for his invention, modestly 
propounded this view of things. He thought 
that at the fit moment the impending blessing 
hovered in the air, and fell on fortunate 
shoulders ; the air so impregnated with the 
new birth that two minds, or even more, might 
germinate at the same time. His pride was 
not to be the proud inventor, but the favored 
messenger of one of Heaven's gifts to man. 



S6 A SHEAF OF PAPERS. 

So at last we begin to suspect that the wit 
of man is only one of the forces of Nature, — a 
puppet which the unseen artist directs and 
manages ; happy should he be to accept such 
a confederacy and such a copartnership. 

But how vainly man strives when the drift 
of the forces of creation are at work in opposi- 
tion to his desires ! 

President Grant may give the command to 
deal with the Indian tribes as direct the laws 
of Christian kindness, or not ; but the inexora- 
ble order of One above presidents has gone forth, 
and neither sword nor Bible can much modify 
the doom of the Modoc. He is as one of the 
forest- tree growths, in the place of which, when 
it is cut down, a new order of vegetation 
springs. He fades into the mist of the hills ; 
as the pale children of Ossian have long since 
been swept into the shadowy valley of Death. 
That valley is the charnel-house of nations. 
They lie there in their orderly crypts and 
tombs, with dates and names, to show for 
what steps in the movement of the races they 
were used, and for what ideas they stood. 
Their work, their thought, their life still beat 
in the life which leaves them behind ; and so 
shall we their successors surrender to the future, 



TBE FLY ON THE WHEEL. 87 

and, like them, be but as stepping-stones in the 
world's transcendent destiny. 

The conflict between the will of man, nay, 
his religious hopes and aspirations, and the 
hidden laws of growth for our planet, have 
always been the source of much confusion and 
perplexity. 

The religious man has always separated 
himself from the world. It and its wearisome 
struggles, its invitations and its denials, he puts 
in antagonism to the laws of the spirit. And 
yet he all the while is of the world, and lives 
as heartily in it as another. 

He has no morbid dread of his fate suggested 
by the eye of the needle, and if the trumpet 
sound to battle, he is not found offering either 
of his cheeks to any advancing enemy. A pure 
and spiritual minority has managed to live while 
these spiritual and earthly wheels caught them 
in their inexorable teeth. They have lived the 
life of renunciation, of asceticism, of unselfish- 
ness ; .but the toilers and the men of action, of 
all the sects of Christians, have bravely lived 
their discordant lives of robust hypocrisy. 
Judged by the souls of these men, Christ's 
doctrine is the manna of the spirit, the com- 
forter, the guide of life ; judged by their lives, 



88 A SHEAP op PAPEUS. 

his commands were poetic exaggerations, meant 
only for a better world, or a far-distant future. 

It would seem simply as an explanation of 
this that two orders of divine law are here in 
conflict, incompatible with each other if only 
one be admitted as of divine authority. But 
we know that finally the law of love shall 
supersede the law of violence, the law of being 
shall supersede the law of having. We look 
with thirst and longing towards 

" that one divine event 
To which the whole creation moves ; " 

and then in the'unity of a Christian civilization 
we shall behold fused and lost these apparent 
discords. 

There is a toy which we all remember to 
have loved as boys. A hollow metal fish, with 
iron in its head, is made to move at will by 
him who holds before it a magnet. 

It obeys like a living thing, and follows the 
finger of its master. How like this one of iron 
are the huge swarms of fish which annually 
move southward in compact mass, — the solid 
multitudes of herring, for instance ; or, with 
reversed motion, the shad, migrating from south 
to north. A hidden magnet seems to guide 



TBE FLY ON TEE WMEEL, 80 

them, and they obey as having no will beyond 
the impulse of such. 

And these typify and foreshadow the great 
migration of nations. What impulse drove 
from their primal seats in the uplands of Asia 
the three great waves of men, which, having 
displaced a weaker and less cultured popula- 
tion, remained in their places, and for fireless 
cave-dwellers and the nourishment of fruits and 
roots, brought in the era of the arrow and the 
spear, which we call the stone age : and the 
later hordes, which, displacing these implements, 
brought first bronze and lastly iron, and so 
founded the civilization of Europe, we can 
never know. It was most probably some in- 
stinct as blind as the impulse which moves the 
hollow iron fish of the boy. They moved to 
the lands they knew not, to the place appointed 
for them by Providence, and under such guid- 
ance do the vast movements of mankind seem 
ever to be led. 

The exodus of Israel to the places appointed 
for the Jewish people claims to have had Jeho- 
vah for its leader. Moses was but his represent- 
ative and mouth-piece. 

If we deny the scriptural claim of such lead- 
ership, still the emigration must, like all such 



90 A SSEAF OP PAPERS. 

important innovations, have found its energy in 
a will behind that of man, and be the resultant 
of providential causes. 

Nowhere in history is there an emigration on 
so large a scale, and with such gigantic results, 
as that which for two hundred years has been 
going on with ever increasing volume to the 
shores of America from Europe. It swells and 
grows with every returning year. It is the 
Niagara of nations ! The accumulated life of 
the Old World moves as move the rapids, and 
falls to a new level and into a new continent. 
And like Niagara, so noisy and impetuous be- 
fore its fall, how peaceful and how still is it 
after that descent ! 

What dumbness in the records of these huge 
and conflicting masses in their new home ! One 
would have thought that the disruption of home 
ties, the disturbance of all former methods and 
habits of living, would have celebrated them- 
selves in epic and in song, — that some master- 
hand would have portrayed the pang of removal 
and the joys of the new home. But all is si- 
lence. 

It is as if the mass were pushed without a 
crisis of passion or desire to their new stations, 
that they felt they were but flies on the wheel, 



THE FLY ON THE WHEEL. 91 

and that all poignancy of personality was lost in 
the grandeur of the event. 

Later, perhaps, some Goethe will sing the soDg 
of the emigrant, and make a new Hermann and 
Dorothea, which shall hang round the dusty 
path of the settler the flowers of poetry and 
sentiment. 

Homer lived not with the armies which de- 
stroyed Ilium, and they in the after-time may 
behold the sacred poem which shall embalm in 
verse their struggles and success. 



92 A SBJEAF OF PAVE US. 



A DAY WITH THE FRENCH. 

/^NE of the periodical humors of French 
life, showing the bad blood in its system, 
and called by the newspapers " Revolution," 
came to the surface just as I was leaving for 
Europe, in the spring of 1848. By delaying 
only a short time in England, I was enabled, 
with certain American friends, new to the 
playful ways of the French, to find myself in 
the Hotel Mirabeau just in time to see one of 
those scenic representations, generally ending in 
blood, which they so love. 

It was the 5th of May, and from our rooms 
we could see the procession of lovers of liberty 
— heroes of the hour, and willing or unwilling 
sharers in the giddiness of the moment — go by 
our windows. The pet then was the gamin, 
elevated to a height which he has only since sus- 
tained in the Miserahles of Victor Hugo. These 
little creatures marched by the windows, over- 
weighted with their accoutrements and their 
heavy muskets (for they had not had time to 
make toy-guns), each with an enormous bouquet 



A DAY WITH THE FRENCH. 93 

in its muzzle. Everywhere they were received 
with acclamations ; and handkerchiefs waved 
high above their heads. The day of these boys, 
however, was soon over: many of them were 
sent later to Algeria, to consider, over the 
ploughshare, the uncertainty of human glory, 
while others slunk back to their nests in the 
Faubourg du Temple. An intelligent eye in a 
minute, from our window, could have under- 
stood some of the persistent qualities of French 
character, — of what we call the character of the 
Latin race. The love of decoration, the spirit 
of the theatre, the vanity which entreats always 
for a spectator, can be found everywhere along 
the long line of French history. These, with the 
love of art, which would rise to really . great 
heights if only nobleness and a faith in religious 
things, which is wanting to them, could be sup- 
plied, constitute their character. This gives the 
superiority to their salons^ — the surrender to the 
hour ; -the wit, which plays with sunny mockery 
round every subject; the give-and-take, — r^- 
pUque, — never discourteous, but marked by a 
friendly sauciness which Anglo-Saxons do not 
know; all done for the vain felicity of the mo- 
ment, make up the chat of their famous salons. 
Their mobility is perhaps the central activity 



94 



\PER8. 



which explains them best. One of the most 
brilUant ladies of Paris said to me she always 
thought of the ultimate particles of an Eng- 
lishman as square, but those of a Frenchman 
as round. The image expresses a great truth. 
An Englishman, when conventional barriers are 
removed, finds himself the same square creature 
as before, and only seeks to regain the equipoise 
and convention he has lost ; but the rolling 
Frenchman overflows them like a tide. The 
trouble is then, as in the overflows of their 
rivers, which annually disturb everybody, and 
devastate widely, to make them rentrer dans leur 
lit. It very often takes an imperial engineer 
with supreme authority to do that. 

These maladies of the body politic run their 
course like others ; small at first, they swell to 
fever-heat, and then the lancet must be called 
When at the worst, the sick chamber, which 



m. 



is all Paris, has an atmosphere deleterious to the 
well which spreads the malady. There was no 
fever, so to say, when the little boys went by 
with their guns. Mixed with them, with the 
broad scarfs of power across their whole bodies, 
were the members of government, — Lamartine, 
with that air of cavalier distinction and lyric 
audacity, and among the row behind him of 



A DAY WITH THE FRENCH. 95 

most honorable and dishonorable statesmen, we 
saw with deep interest the noble face of Arago. 
There was something in it of a cross between an 
eagle and Daniel Webster. His soft, beautiful 
eye had the depth of Webster's, while the car- 
riage of his head and his nose's curve suggested 
the king of birds. 

We retired to our dinner — for this occurred 
the day after our arrival — with the serene satis- 
faction that we had not crossed the ocean in 
vain. One of our enthusiastic party vowed that 
he was repaid already. 

From that day forward the dance went gaily. 
I will not follow its steps ; the public know them 
already, and at what time, and by what physician, 
the lancet was applied. I merely notice the fact 
that the whole city seemed really attacked by a 
moral malady, to be tasted in the air. This was 
so strongly expressed, that when, on my proposing 
to leave Paris, a Scotch friend besought me to 
delay a week for the treatment of his daughter's 
eyes, — "Not a week," I said; ^five days, I will. 
But, I think, at the week's end, the disease will 
have declared itself so energetically, we may not 
be able to leave." 

He agreed to my five days, and we went to- 
gether to Boulogne. I left him then ; and two 



96 



A SHEAF OF PAPERS. 



days after, in London, got from him a letter, 
saying, "What a terrible event! My daughter 
and her governess are wholly given up to making 
charpie for the wounded ! " 

The round French ultimate particles had over- 
flowed into barricades. The Archbishop of Paris 
— they seem always to want to kill an archbishop 
— was shot ; and the iron man of the moment, 
Cavaignac, was looking over his victorious sword 
at nameless thousands of fellow-citizens who had 
gone down before it. But Cavaignac, the most 
genuine man in France, a life-long, austere re- 
publican, by his wholesome surgery forfeited his 
legitimate claim to the presidency, and a young 
man who had lately started on his travels with 
a tame eagle, and a wish to reside near the Seine, 
at France's expense, was, as we all know, pre- 
ferred to him. 

Such was the course of- history; but there was 
one movement which, if it had been better un- 
derstood and organized, might have given a dif- 
ferent turn to affairs. There was a very lively 
time in Paris on the 15th of May. The weather 
was clear and beautiful, when one is forced to be 
happy, even if death and revolution impend. I 
had made myself smart, with a new waistcoat, 
to go to the Chamber of the National Assembly, 



A BAY WITH THE FRENCH. 97 

and hear M. Walewsky's speech on Poland. 
There was no hint of any thing beyond that; 
no plan, no far-sighted intention on the part of 
anybody ; but a thin man with a beard, named 
Barbes, having lately been freed from prison, the 
sight of him, of course, stimulated a republican 
ardor; away went the French at. a moment's 
notice in their most marvellous manner. I was in 
the Assembly, comfortable in a loge, listening to 
Count Walewsky's prolixities, which fell doubly 
dead on the ear, for he would read his speech, — 
an undertaking bad enough at all times, but im- 
possible through the frenzy and fever round him. 
After some half hour of dull matter, he paused 
for a moment, when, to my profound astonish- 
ment, I heard all the representatives shout, " Go 
on ! go on ! " 

He did so with faltering voice : but slowly, 
mixing with his accents, a faint hum, as from 
some distant bee, for some time really barely 
audible, buzzed nearer and nearer, till suddenly 
it changed to a roar ; all the doors above and 
below were forced, and a miscellaneous mass of 
perspiring patriots invaded the building. No 
check, no remonstrance with them ; every thing 
that happens in France is what is called un fait 
accompli, and submitted to. Not that remon- 

5 G 



9^ 



A SEEAF OF PAPERS. 



strance just then would have been of mu.ch use. 
The spectacle was terribly entertaining, but also 
alarming. These men did not know what they 
wanted, nor how to get it; but they wanted 
something dreadful; the French republicans 
ehassent de race, and always remember to shape 
themselves on their darling days of "pa era," 
and Dr. Guillotin's ingenious machine. 

This submission of the French to what hap- 
pens in their evil days is one of the most strik- 
ing points in their character. They have no 
moral conviction, no moral bond, no conspiracy 
of the good to match the conspiracy of the bad, 
no sense of personal outrage, of what the citi- 
zen should consider duty and right ; but they 
bow their heads and the wave goes over them, 
and lightly lifts them again when it is past. The 
furious mania of the first Revolution was stopped 
in an instant. To be sure, it had reached its 
height, and was making Paris a cemetery, but it 
was as simple as this. The weather being hot, 
Carnot and other chiefs met Robespierre at din- 
ner, and on account of the heat it was proposed 
to take off their coats. Carnot, while putting 
his away carefully, managed to visit the pocket 
of Robespierre's coat, where he found, like the 
hero of a melodrama, a list of the proscribed, 



A DAT WITH TEE FRENCH. 99 

containing his own name and that of others of 
the dining chiefs. It must be an odd sensation 
to see a lot of friends dining comfortably round 
you, and to think for how short a time their ap- 
petites will be needed. The next day, when 
Couthon, who seems, with his deformity and 
his ostentatious fondness for pets, an incarnation 
from Victor Hugo's brain, and St. Just, so fair, 
so foolish, and so frantic, appeared with their 
leader, Robespierre, the French Revolution was 
easily disposed of. Robespierre had prepared to 
set the axe going all over Paris in as many mur- 
der shops as his new project for additional com- 
mittees of public safety could make, when a 
breath dissolved all. St. Just, while reading 
the project of the law, was interrupted by mur- 
murs. The heart of France suddenly dared to 
beat for right ; and health took the place of dis- 
ease. Robespierre, dashing to the tribune, ex- 
claimed, — 

" President of assassins, hear me ! " 
Of course, such an expression implied his 
inevitable defeat. The next day he was shot 
while preparing a paper to stimulate the sections 
to activity. I have had the extraordinary felic- 
ity of seeing the paper he was then writing, — 
the pen, interrupted in its office of writing his 



too A SHEAF OF PAPERS, 

name, midway, has swerved with a great curve 
to the bottom of the paper, and beside it are 
two or three drops of his blood, which look like 
the magic seals by which life was counter- 
changing doom for reprieve, and giving to 
France again a hope which that very paper had 
been intended to remove for ever. 

But to return. After the mob had seen that 
its forcible entrance to the Chamber was a suc- 
cess, it hardly knew what to do next ; nor did 
the president of the Assembly, M. Buloz, nor 
the representatives, know any better what to do 
themselves. So the time was taken up by the 
increasing entrance of constant contingents from 
the street, and an apparent attraction to the 
tribune, as the central place whence something 
of dangerous novelty might issue. There they 
clustered and hung amid the meaningless jingle 
of the speaker's bell, like some monstrous sea- 
growth, over and through which a great revolu- 
tionary ocean was playing, — a multitudinous 
unit of gesticulation and outcries, whose root 
on the platform seemed momentarily on the 
point of giving way. What became, eventu- 
ally, of the virtuous and amiable president in 
that crush I did not discover, but as long as I 
saw him he retained his honest and worthy look 



A DAT WITH THE FRENCH. 101 

in the midst of the scape-jail faces about him. 
He probably " eclipsed himself," as the French 
say, though perhaps he remained there out of 
sight ; for it is a remarkable fact that the Cham- 
ber, as such, behaved admirably. It was not 
commented on, that I noticed, but their conduct 
I thought most patient and wise. Not a repre- 
sentative budged or displayed resentment ; they 
all sat grandly still, like figures of iron, revers- 
ing the story of the invasion of the Roman 
senate by the Gauls ; for now the Gauls were 
acting as if they were Romans. 

To fill up the time, a little episode was con- 
trived in honor of the diminutive but charm- 
ing Louis Blanc. He was seized upon by the 
patriots, and, amid gestures of remonstrance, 
hoisted upon their shoulders and carried round 
the room in an unworthy and temporary tri- 
umph. I met him at dinner afterwards in 
London, and referred to the pleasure I had had 
in seeing him so honored by the mob. With a 
gesture of humiliation he cried, " Ne m''en par- 
lez pas ! " Fortunately, that grand old singer, 
Bdranger, was not there to suffer humiliation ; 
though recently made a member of the Cham- 
ber, he had sent a letter declining the honor on 
the ground of age and infirmity. Lacordaire, 



102 A SHEAF OF PAPERS. 

also, the eloquent, whose noble figure had been 
conspicuous for some days after the opening of 
the Chamber in his striking dress of a Domini- 
can monk, had, I think, weary of the fruitless 
waste of his time, withdrawn ere this. Nor was 
Lamartine present ; he had been the Chamber's 
good genius from the first ; and his lofty flights 
of nobly accented oratory, his spirited appeals 
to the better instincts of Frenchmen, his ex- 
treme distinction of look, manner, and voice, 
had often made '' a sunshine in a shady place." 
I hope at least he was not there. That vanity 
which in him towered co-equal with his splen- 
did gifts would have been sorely wounded. 

About that time I had been invited to dinner 
to meet him. Unfortunately I could not go. 
My hostess, who should have been, describing 
the dinner, recounted with blushes how they 
had timidly ventured to refer to his admirable 
action on his great day, — the day when the 
mob surrounded the Hotel de Ville, and, waving 
the blood-red flag of the Revolution, called him 
to the balcony. He appeared there holding the 
tricolor ; and by a few energetic words, appeal- 
ing to the honorable and victorious fields it had 
traversed, threw successful discredit upon its 
bloody and hated rival. 



A DAY WITS THE FRENCH. 103 

" That day," he replied to his hostess, " there 
were two men in me ; the physical man was 
beautiful, the moral man sublime." 

To such lengths will go the naivete of a 
Frenchman's vanity, even when modesty would 
better become the noble position he has won. 

Suddenly in the front of the wavering cloud 
of humanity was seen upon the tribune's plat- 
form an austere and striking figure. The face 
was thin and worn with long years of imprison- 
ments, and in its long and massive beard tem- 
pests seemed to have made their nest. It was 
Barbes, the victim of tyranny, the favorite of 
the mob, the " friend of man." Amid confu- 
sion and constant accession from without, till 
all standing-room was occupied, he proclaimed 
that the rich ought to be struck with an amende 
of milliards, to punish them for the crime of 
possession, ordained the rehabilitation of the 
guillotine and many other such trifles as his 
revolutionary memory furnished him; all of 
which was received as matter of course. 

I had been, by this time, imprisoned there 
some three hours, in an atmosphere heavily 
charged every moment with dust, the exhala- 
tions of these adventurous vagabonds, and the 
natural heat of one of spring's most delightful 



104 A SHEAF OF PAPERS. 

days. About this time the door of my tribune 
was forced, and two odd individuals precipitated 
themselves into it. One was a gamin^ though 
an old one, who, while the more aristocratic 
auditory drew back, insinuated himself far 
enough forward to lean over the edge of the 
cushion and gloat upon the sufferings of the 
poor representatives below. The other was a 
stalwart negro, sweating as with the sun of 
equatorial Africa, and brandishing a huge and 
mysterious banner, which bore I know not what 
inscription of " liberty, fraternity, and ." 

After enjoying the nobly-born discomfort of 
the members below him, the gamin^ taking off 
to me with mock respect a greasy casquette, 
said, while fixing his eye upon the splendor of 
my new waistcoat, — 

" You see the case we make of the aristocrats 
below ; I beg your pardon, I did not notice that 
you were one of them." 

All looked at me with stern disapproval, but 
after waiting a moment, I tapped him gently on 
the shoulder with my cane, and said cheerfully, — 

" My lad, you are mistaken ; I am a republi- 
can, but belong to a republic which can keep 
on its legs ; and where it is often the sign of a 
man of the people to be as well dressed as I am. 



A DAY WITH THE FRENCH. 105 

Let us hope that you will finally come to that 
here." 

He retired extinguished. 

Delighted to hear of any thing that could 
stand on its legs which called itself a republic, 
the negro turned to me with adhesion. "It 
was all a trap and a sell," he said. He had 
been induced to march in the ranks and carry 
a banner with the understanding that the long 
procession which had wound its way from the 
heart of the quartier St. Antoine was to stop at 
the bridge, from which one or two were to go 
forward and humbly present their petition for 
some real or fancied redress of wrong. 

" It is too bad," he said, " and I am ashamed 
of it." 

Africa saw its way to the right and wrong of 
the matter better than could Gaul. I approved 
his sentiments, and told him that so far as I saw 
the people were only striking at themselves in 
the person of their representatives, who were 
there to redress legally any wrongs that might 
come before them. 

As the hour of dinner was approaching, I 
thought it best to consider some mode of escape. 
I did not want to fail if I attempted it, and sup- 
posed the galleries to be crowded with hostile 



106 A SEEAF OF PAPERS. 

and detaining patriots. But at last I ventured 
to sally forth, and finding, to my surprise, circu- 
lation almost unimpeded, easily made my way 
to the entrance-hall below, where I saw, seated 
at a small table, a terrible revolutionary figure, 
dressed after the approved pattern of the days 
of Eobespierre. He had on an enormous cocked 
hat, and a waistcoat whose lappels covered his 
breast, while a huge sabre rattled at his side 
as he prepared documents presumably of most 
direful and bloody significance. Disgusted with 
such a bit of low theatre, I pretended to be an 
Englishman who was simply admiring the de- 
tails of the building, and intentionally backed 
on to him while fastening my eyes upon the cor- 
nice and ceiling overhead. After this limited 
enjoyment of independence, I withdrew by the 
door in the rear, for the front one could not be 
passed. As this one had no direct communica- 
tion with the street, I paused in doubt, but soon 
found by the wall, to my surprise, a charming 
boy, beautiful and smiling, who, enacting the 
polite side of the gamines character, with much 
grace and civility handed me over the wall by 
benches which had been placed there for the 
convenience of Monsieur la Canaille. 

When in the street, I saw what I can never 



A DAY WITH TEE FRENCH. 107 

forget. It stood for the triumpli of good over 
evil, of order over disorder, of legal force over 
mob violence. The bridge was wholly empty, 
and on its farther side, moving with the silent 
celerity of doom, was a semicircle of bayonets. 
Never have I seen guns express so much as did 
those. It was blue sky after tempest ; the sun 
played upon their shining points as if adding its 
blessing to their brightness. 

I had just time to hurry across the bridge 
before the military came up. In five minutes 
afterward they had cleared at the point of the 
bayonet the National Assembly building, which, 
rising as it did like an exhalation from the 
ground, the back portion of it of unpainted 
wood, had seemed to predict but temporary 
occupancy to those within. 

Chaos and ancient night swallowed the dis- 
comfited patriots. I said afterwards to one of 
them, whom I chanced to meet, " You made a 
mistake in confining yourself that day to words. 
If you had cut everybody's throat and then 
marched on the Hotel de Ville it would have 
been a fait accompli^ and you might have held 
Paris a month, a year perhaps, who knows ! " 

When I was fairly on the other side of the 
Seine, and in the sweet and orderly sunshine, 



108 A SHEAF OF PAPERS. 

I encountered immediately three individuals, 
two Frenchmen and an Englishman, who asked 
me the news. 

"Nothing in particular," I said, "only anar- 
chy, the restoration of the guillotine, and a 
hundred milliards^ to be taken from pockets 
which can afford to spare them." 

The different effect on the three was striking 
and national. The two Frenchmen cowered 
under it, and without remonstrance precipi- 
tately fled ; the Englishman followed them 
with jeers, while he squared himself and talked 
of the " damned rascals " in the Chamber and 
the cowardice of such fellows as these. 

" They haven't an ounce of moral force," he 
exclaimed, "to resist with, and fly before the 
first breath of outrage." 

I left him, and reached the world's favorite 
lunching-shop, kept by Germans, at the corner 
of the Rue Castiglione, in a state sadly needing 
repair. I was dirty through and through, and 
so weary and famished that the quantity of 
refreshments I took seemed to suggest a three 
days' fast. While eating and drinking I kept 
my eye steadily fixed on the shop-girl. 

"Why do you look at me in that strange 
way?" she said, as the last biscuit de Rheims 



A DAT WITH THE FRENCH. 109 

and sorbet had been devoured. I quietly told 
her the news. She bounded from her desk cry- 
ing, " Marie ! Marie ! les volets I " and before I 
left the shop the windows were as dark as her 
hopes with bar and shutter. 

The next day she thanked me profusely for 
the exactness of my news, not a detail but what 
was correct, she said, with an enthusiasm almost 
as if speaking of something agreeable. 

I was soon at my hotel, where a warm bath 
washed a good deal of liberie, fraternite, egalitS 
out of me. By dinner-time I was presentable, 
and so calm, that, not wishing to disturb diges- 
tion, I refrained till far in the dinner from giv- 
ing the news- of my adventures with the lively 
Frenchmen of May 15th, 1848. 



110 A SHEAF OF PAPERS. 



TOUCH AND GO. 

TT TE Americans are distinguished from the 
^ more ponderous and solid races of the 
Old World by a certain lack of completeness, 
— a love of the slight and unsubstantial. 

It is characteristic of us. We do love to em- 
ploy all our capital ; to make our labor go as far 
as it fairly can ; to get out of the world all that 
it will give us in return for our investment. 
" Touch and go " is our motto. It might also 
be that of the volatile Frenchman, " Glissez, 
mortel, n'appuyez pas." 

On first reaching England, nothing more sur- 
prises us than its wasteful prodigality of strength. 
Every wall seems built with consideration for pos- 
terity. The piers, the castles, the public build- 
ings, front time with the craggy resoluteness of 
the quarry whence they came. Here our build- 
ings have a kaleidoscopic look, — evanescent, as 
if built for the hour. They sojourn but for a day, 
and seem to whisper, " Wait, and see our solider 
successor." Many of the country structures are 



TOUGH AND 00. HI 

painted white boxes, which barely touch the 
ground on which they rest. They look like a 
flight of white doves alight, or cigar-ashes on a 
green table. And yet we came from these Eng- 
lish, who so love the substantial, that everywhere 
cost and material might be pared away, and enough 
left to content the heart of the American. 

Nor does this come from penury of spirit or 
economy. When we do undertake the grand or 
magnificent, our money runs like water ; and a 
monument of size and ambition, if not of strength 
and thoroughness, attests the fact. 

A careful mother does not make for her grow- 
ing boy as substantial a suit, which may need 
renewing in six months, as the tailor, later, may 
for the grown man. 

One cause of this habit of ours is our expan- 
sive youth. We grow by renewals. We do not 
build out', in ever-continued wings and additions, 
the house of our fathers, but we take it down 
and build another. Would that we could also 
take our streets down, and rebuild them in ac- 
cordance with the wants of the growing country ! 

What a mistake it would be to build in a heavy, 
lasting fashion, that which must inevitably be soon 
pushed aside by the torrent of fermenting life, 
which is for ever freshly shaping itself ! Such a 



112 A SHEAF OF PAPERS. 

building wlould soon stand like a rock in the tor- 
rent, or like some of the towered islands of the 
Rhine, which look in every thing as they may 
have looked five hundred years ago. 

But the habit lies deeper stiU. From the ne- 
cessity of using every penny in the early days 
of the colonies, and of the makeshifts which go 
with semi-barbaric living, we have inherited an 
intellectual preference for a narrow employment 
of means. It is economy of power. It is a love 
of seeing no force wasted. This it is which 
makes the genuine American idea. If in Eng- 
land one of our light vehicles is copied, it is sure 
to be heavier than the original. With us it is 
the reverse. Our copy of every thing English 
is airier, lighter, more unsubstantial. No mar- 
gin for us. We eat near the crust, and our 
crust must be very thin. 

I remember seeing a typical American, once 
while crossing in a Cunarder, strike with impa- 
tience the substantial brass railing which pro- 
tected the upper deck. 

" How I hate such a waste," he said ; " it 
would do were it half as strong." " Capital ! " 
I said. "So you prefer risking your lif6 by that 
half, to indulge your affection for ' touch and go.' " 
And he did. Captains who, in consideration of 



TOUCH AND 00. 113 

danger, slow their steamers during fog, rarely 
get praises or testimonials. 

An American to save his hours will risk his 
days. This determination to save power and to 
narrow the margin meets with the consequences 
which critical moments must bring to what has 
so slight a foundation. When the inefficient, 
cheap management of a railroad " telescopes " 
some of our best and dearest ; when the ill-in- 
spected boiler of the company, running for luck, 
leaves in the gilded saloon a row of parboiled 
and ghastly corpses ; when the fringe of wood, 
which simulates the beauty and safety of stone, 
leaves half a city a charred and grinning desert, 
the world wakes up and denounces for awhile 
" touch and go," and resolves on safer living ; 
but the idea is rooted in the mind, and it does 
not last long. 

When, too, the physician finally persuades the 
mother that the spongy stuff which the cynical 
baker (who will not eat his own bread so 
cooked) furnishes is making pale the cheek of 
her child, she contemplates reform, and will even 
omit for a while from her breakfast the hot cakes 
which she loves so well. 

When economy of fuel fills with carbonic gas 
the lungs of the desiccated pupil at school, the 



114 A SHEAF OF PAPERS. 

parent will, perhaps too late, wake up to the ad- 
vantage of fresh air ; and the power which had 
been taken from the growing body to stimulate 
the jaded brain may for a time be again invested 
in exercise and health. 

When the enterprising capitalist finds that the 
money he had intrusted to the imaginative and 
audacious company which disbelieved in margins 
and reserves has been thrown into the sea, he 
may find his enterprise very American, but cer- 
tainly unsatisfactory; and he will resolve on 
confining his activity to solid investments till 
the next moonbeam from Folly Land shall have 
flooded his brain with its glamour. 

But our love of " touch and go " finds its best 
comfort and expression in paper money. Here 
is something with no margin at all, unless you 
choose to think so. Here is something very dear 
to the American heart. It can be made out of 
rags and a little ink. It seems almost provok- 
ing that for its existence it should be supposed 
to represent gold. The perfection of the thing 
would be to have it represent nothing but itself, 
and the general wealth of the country. 

Gold is an old fogy, and had better retire to 
the chests of misers, and the bank vaults of 
countries without enterprise or credit. The 



TOUCH AND GO. 115 

happy days are coming when credit will be con- 
sidered sufficient capital for the young mer- 
chant, and apple-pies will be had for the asking. 
But the autumn days do come, " the saddest of 
the year," when poor old Credit lies very sick 
abed, and the mourners go about the streets. 

It is bad with our American then, and he has 
visions of economy, and of eating squash for 
pumpkin : but see how nobly he bears the dis- 
aster. The love of " touch and go " is too thor- 
oughly at home in his bosom for him fco mourn 
as one who has no comfort. He has a philoso- 
phy which teaches him that such things must 
happen. Buoyant as the petrel, which unruffled 
rides in the deepest scoop of the wave, he bears 
his depression, wisely believing that a moment 
may find him on the crest of the billow, with 
the sun overhead and the blue horizon all about 
him. 

On returning many years ago from Europe, I 
met an acquaintance, and on asking him how he 
got on in his profession he replied " that he had 
changed it." I asked him how was all at home ; 
he said " he did not know, for now he lived in 
New York ; " and as I took leave of him by name, 
he called after me to say, " that for family reasons 
he had changed his name too." He was all " touck 



116 A SHEAF OF PAPERS. 

and go." He may now be a missionary to the 
Hindoos, with his tenth name and his fifth wife, 
having got so good a start at first. 

Perhaps there is no dogma, in a certain sense, 
that is more imbedded in the popular heart than 
that form of " one man is as good as another," 
which makes the people believe in general ability 
as equal to any thing. 

No specialists for such. West Point was rather 
a bugbear than a refuge during the war, there 
being something invidious in a man's being spe- 
cially trained. Stern necessity taught the true 
lesson, and the margin of real training saved us. 

The people love quacks. " Why can't a clever 
fellow do it as well as one of them diploma peo- 
ple? " It loves to trust to guesswork, and risks 
its most precious possession from preference with 
the most audacious charlatan. 

But it should not be forgotten that our econ- 
omy of power is the secret also of the national 
genius of invention, — that invention which util- 
izes every pound of material, and abbreviates 
every antiquated method. 

This genius of discovery, which goes to the 
heart of the matter, and, jumping from cause 
to effect, omits every non-essential, is mak- 
ing masterpieces everywhere. These are our 



TOUCH AND GO. 117 

Transfigurations and our Parthenons. Horatio 
Greenough, when fresh from the sleep of labor 
in Italy, was standing in warm admiration before 
the bows of one of our clipper ships. " There," 
cried he, with uncontrollable energy, " is some- 
thing which I should not be ashamed to show 
Phidias." . Ruskin has said that of all man's 
works what nearest approaches the expressive 
beauty of Nature is the bow of a ship. Its system 
of curves, melting into the body of the vessel, 
its flower-like opening and subtle expansion into 
grace and strength, — utility married to beauty, 
— make it one of man's sovereign masterpieces. 

And it must never be forgotten that the most 
beautiful bows, the most beautiful ships, the 
swan-like yacht which leads the regattas of the 
world, are American. This genius discovered 
the reaper, the carpet-loom, the sewing-machine, 
and a thousand other chefs d^osuv7'es^ which, 
abridging expense and labor, make luxuries 
cheap, and bring the results of skill within the 
reach of the pockets of the poor. 

In every direction this skill is adding to the 
comfort of the world ; and if there be a demo- 
cratic influence of the future which shall sup- 
plement the faith of the statesman, it will be 
found in this genius of ours, which will not rest 



118 A SHEAF OF PAPERS. 

till it has made every thing accessible to every- 
body. 

Formerly only the baron in his castle could 
possess the luxuries which now gladden the 
houses of the indigent. The priceless drawings 
of the best old masters, the very rare possession 
of governments and nobles, can now by modern 
reproduction hang upon the cottage- walls of the 
peasant. This is democracy at its best, and shows 
how it lives and moves in accordance with the 
spirit of the age, and the hourly triumphs of 
science and invention. Life flows in the direc- 
tion of democracy in every country : the white 
banner of Henry V. cannot stay it, nor the bay- 
onet of MacMahon ; and it is now the crucial test 
of man's intelligence to manage and work it, to 
understand its false simulacra^ and its pestilent 
make-believes, and to restrain its passions, till 
even France can live in peace and comfort under 
its reign. 



THE ICONOCLAST OF SENSIBILITY, 119 



THE ICONOCLAST OF SENSIBILITY. 

A TALE OF BETBIBUTION. 

■R. ¥/ILLOUGHBY ASPEN was a young 
person of delicate organization. His sen- 
sibility to all forms of homeliness was morbid ; 
his detestation of the brutish and loathsome was 
a passion. Not that he was of a passionate 
nature : his tender frame was too delicate to be 
shaken by eruptions from within, even of the 
mildest description. His repulsions were more 
energetic than his attractions ; for the}'^ seemed 
to protest against the disturbance of that sacred 
beauty in whose atmosphere he only really ex- 
isted. 

Beauty is, perhap ', a strong word for so cos- 
metic a nature as his ; pretty, let us say, — the 
dilution of beauty, the younger sister, and least- 
dowried, of the heavenly sisterhood. 

He owed this sensibility to his mother, who 
was one of those abortive natures, stunted 
growths, so often the result of our country 
habits of unventilated, anthracite rooms, and 
the long imprisonment of winter. If, in Car- 



120 A SHEAF OF PAPERS. 

lisle Castle, a huDdred stalwart Highlanders 
were devitalized and killed by bad air after one 
night, what wonder that returning spring so 
often sees our country matrons emerge from 
kiln-like cottages, spectral and wan, and in piti- 
able contrast with the bloom and freshness of 
the returning year ? 

Not so his father. He was a trader and small 
merchant, and owned many schooners plying 
for fish between New England and the British 
Provinces. 

Square, rugged, and as if hewn out with an 
axe, he seemed the over-looked figure-head of 
one of his own vessels. 

Jupiter had, perchance, granted some sea- 
nymph's prayer, and converted it into a man. 
It was bracing and good for you to meet this 
man in your walk, so roughly quarried, and yet 
so gentle withal. 

He looked well on a pier, a fit part of the 
landscape, and, in rough and angry weather, 
towered a help and a beacon for all. 

You could imagine him rolling dead in the 
trough of the sea, after a tempest, or cut in two 
by a shark ; but your fancy refused to see him 
on a bed of sickness, or languishing after any 
fashion. Nor was he conscious of human in- 



THE IGONOGLAST OF SENSIBILITY. 121 

firmity, other than the residuum in his limbs of 
long nights of struggle with wind and weather, 
and which he considered to be rheumatism. 

He looked upon his poetical boy as a duck 
must at some mishatched chicken, mistaking 
itself for a lover of ponds and exposure ; and 
most perplexed was the good man what to do 
with him. 

As he gazed with grim fondness upon him, so 
flower-like in his drooping conditions, his hght 
delicate hair moulded about his temples, the 
rose-flush in his pretty cheeks, his hands, whose 
every finger seemed to protest against work, the 
father could not in his heart find the confidence 
to make a sailor or mate of him. " No," he 
said, "he is cat-footed, and must stick to dry 
land." And so, after many delays, he was con- 
signed to the store of a friend, who sold the 
freight of the other coasting-schooners. 

The young gentleman tried to make himself 
at home in this grim retreat on one of our 
wharves. It was very hard for him. It was 
most cheerless to look about him, and see no 
one thing that possessed charm and invitation. 
No flower bloomed there. At times, he could 
scarcely repress his tears ; and with longing eyes 
would he watch from an attic-window the white 
6 



122 A SHEAF OF PAPERS. 

sails of the craft, touched with rose-color in the 
light of the withdrawing sun, and sigh to think 
what lands of enchantment they might be visit- 
ing. 

His eyes moistened, and the three little pearl- 
studs which adorned his narrow chest seemed 
three tears which had rolled from his eyes of 
longing and regret. The shock of return down- 
stairs after these flights of dreaming made the 
squalid, familiar room more repulsive than be- 
fore. 

The place seemed the bed of the ocean, where, 
as in a cup, had settled its most searching and 
pungent essence. The salt of the deep was 
there magnified as if the multitudinous seas had 
shrunk to a pool. And around him lay the 
monsters of the deep, salt with the intensity of 
their death, in this crater of a vanished ocean, 
and stretching on shelves in such a perspective 
of dried cod-fish, that it seemed their judgment- 
day ; and so there they were, answering the 
fish-horn of some angel of the deep. 

Unable to bear the bitterness of his life, and 
his stifled longing for some freshness and beauty, 
he entreated his father to allow him to try the 
country. 

The good-natured parent consented. " Yes," 



THE ICONOCLAST OF SENSIBILITY. 128 

he said to himself: "no tar, no salt, sticks to 
that nature. He is like a flower ; let him go 
and try the country." 

He placed him with a cousin of his mother, in 
the pretty village of Sylvia, at the foot of a spur 
of the White Mountains. 

There he was happy. After running into his 
patent-leather boots a pitchfork, getting igno- 
miniously thrown in an unequal encounter with 
a cow, whose nature he failed to apprehend ; 
after getting used in vain to the conditions of 
country meats (which seemed to him to come 
from fowls and animals of more robust and 
muscular constitutions than those which the 
town knew), he finally settled down to the full 
bowl of delicious milk, so strong to his city 
stomach that it made up for the loss of his 
meat. With this, and an occasional doughnut, 
he sufficed. 

His delight was, after the pseudo-industry of 
the day, — the mild supervision of his cousin's 
tough boys in getting the cattle to field and 
home, his charge (being the last, generally) to 
see the barn-door fast and tight; the sympa- 
thetic adhesion he gave to their sister, as her 
white arms moved with an energy he envied 
above the coagulating butter, — after these were 



124 A SHEAF OF PAPERS. 

over, his delight was to repose from his labors 
in a nook of his own near the mountains. 

That was bliss to him ; and no wonder. Nat- 
ure, finding herself here encouraged to show her 
powers, was lavish of them. She seemed to 
gather herself together to enjoy and to bewilder, 
before she made with the pines the steep ascent 
to cloudland and the skies. The smallest thing 
here was emphasized. The feet of the moun- 
tains were moccasoned in flowers ; and they 
were of many colors, and of that depth of mean- 
ing which only the zone of the mountains and 
the sea can give. The trees moved their boughs 
with majesty; and their roots sought every 
excuse of notch or ledge for twists and surprises 
like those of a conjurer. The little brook 
started and shouted from side to side, scared 
yet amused by these waywardnesses, and finally 
went heels over head, like a venturesome child, 
just before the rock where our hero had found 
and dedicated a throne for himself. 

Stretched there with hands above his head, 
and his fine mind wholly unbent, and surren- 
dered energetically to doing nothing, he was no 
longer a man troubled by cows and salt fish. 
He was Shelley's spirit of beauty, — an essence 
feeding on the eternal loveliness, and a portion 



THE ICONOCLAST OF SENSIBILITY, 125 

of the landscape, as it was of him. Here he 
even, at times, rose from the cosmetic condition 
of mind so natural to him — the love of the 
pretty — to the adoration of the beautiful: 
even, at times, the sublime would lift him in a 
spasm of emotion. 

Well he knew this spot of his affections by 
heart. It had done for him what neither his 
father nor mother could have done. 

To it he owed a soul-birth, which but comes 
from the contact of the attempered spirit with 
the dear touch of mother-nature. 

He loved every bit of it, — the lichened and 
veined rock, with its necklace of wild flowers ; 
the brook which chattered and sparkled at its 
feet; the columnar trees, up whose stems his 
fancy mounted and gambolled with the squir- 
rels; and afar beyond to the left the crowded 
blue of the distance, whose vast crests mingled 
and interlocked in ever-varying suggestiveness 
and beauty. 

He promised himself, some day, to visit these, 
when the vacation-time came, and his life should 
fall off satiated and full from the nourishing 
scenery now around him. 

One evening, after a release from the humili- 
ating smells of the farm-yard, and even escaping 



126 A SHEAF OF PAPERS. 

the milky glimmer of the fair dair^^maid's moying 
arms, he sped, with a small book of very unmus- 
cular poems which he loved, to his dear retreat. 

Already at a distance, his spirit predicted dis- 
aster. A malevolent power was abroad, and he 
felt it. All the more quickly did he fly to his 
dear cascade and rock. While afar off, he be- 
held an intruder. 

Another had discovered her, and was wooing 
his sylvan goddess. A rival, — one more de- 
voted and faithful than himself, it may be. He 
sighed to think of sharing what till now had 
been so wholly his. He advanced with caution, 
hiding himself as he advanced, beyond field and 
bush, till, breathless and on tip-toe, he stood 
silently behind the intruder. 

Gracious heavens, what did he discover ! A 
lover, a rival this ! A little ignoble fellow, in a 
threadbare blouse, was seated on what he had 
called his throne, and was complacently contem- 
plating the work of his hands. On one side of 
him was an ignoble hand-bag open, and showing 
folded paper of various sizes and colors. It 
looked like a toad with its mouth open, and re- 
vealing its polluted and venomous interior. On 
the other side of the ignoble figure was a vast 
I)ail or can, with a long stick projecting from it. 



THE ICONOCLAST OF SENSIBILITY. 127 

But, horror of horrors ! On looking upward 
to see what made the ignoble figure rock and 
undulate with such unexplained satisfaction, he 
lifted his eyes and saw — 




128 A SHEAF OF PAPERS. 

Willoughby Aspen did not pause or delay an 
instant. His timidity, Ms drooping, flower-like 
tenderness, convulsed by the insult, fell from 
him like a garment. 

With a cry of rage and exultation, he rushed 
forward, and before the ignoble figure could 
rise, or recognize the nature of the attack, the 
daring Willoughby had bonneted him with his 
own paint-pot. 

The stick caught under his chin, and he could 
not extricate himself. His moans and impreca- 
tions from within his head-gear but sent the 
paint streaming down his face and blouse the 
more. No dog with his head in a stone pitcher 
too small in the neck for him ever was more 
uncomfortable. 

He got to the neighboring inn in a state which 
need not be described. No water, no soap, no 
turpentine could for long remove from his per- 
son the marks of the vengeance of Willoughby 
Aspen. Nor would the aggressor have been 
suspected, unseen as he was by his antagonist, 
but that he came forward himself to modestly 
avow an act which he thought did him credit. 

He was arrested and tried for assault and bat- 
tery. The court-room was crowded. Desolate 
for the time was the country bar-room ; its loaf- 



THE ICONOCLAST OF SENSIBILITY. 129 



ers and story-tellers, and the gentlemen v/ho 
took their stimulants below in silence and pri- 
vacy, in a crypt, as if it were a religious ex- 
ercise, all had deserted for the overflowing 
court- room. The simplicity of the case made 
its duration short. At its close, the judge ad- 
dressed the jury. 

Fortunately, he was wise, and a humorist ; 
and neither Coke nor Littleton had dried up the 
juices of his affectionate nature. 

After a sly look at the jury-box, he shook his 
wattles, and beamed upon the multitude. 

" The offence of battery being proved against 
the prisoner, he must submit to the rigors of the 
law. His assault was sudden, peculiar ; and in 
so using the instruments of the artist's profes- 
sion, and deluging him with color, it was like 
seething a kid in its mother's milk. And that, 
gentlemen, we know, was scripturally forbidden. 

"But was he unprovoked? No, gentlemen. 
He found at his work a man committing far 
greater outrages than his own. 

" That nature which we so scantly possess in 
its grander passages, the common property of 
the nation, he found outraged, insulted, and 
desecrated, as only one devoid of feeling could 
accomplish. Shall a sordid wretch, when we 



130 A SHEAF OF PAPERS. 

come for soul-medicine to the hills, wound every 
better instinct, and recall us to the baser forms 
of human intercourse, the quack and his victim, 
the poison-seller, and the drunkard who makes 
him rich? I am credibly informed that even 
women, more keen to this wickedness than our- 
selves, have been seen, brush in hand, obliter- 
ating the foul traces of these vermin, and so 
inciting us by an example we should not be 
slow to follow. Remember the sensibilities of 
the accused, and how he charged himself with a 
duty we all neglect ; and, Avhile you consider 
the gravity of the assault, I counsel you not to 
fail to give the sufferer sufficient damages for 
his terror and annoyance." 

The jury retired, and brought in a verdict of 
— damages, one cent. Willoughby that even- 
ing was a hero ; and something in the face of 
his fair cousin was to him encouragement and 
comfort. 



TBE FLOWEEtNO OF A NATION. 131 



THE FLOWERING OF A NATION. 

^ I ^HE flowering of nations is the most inter- 
esting fact of their life. When all things 
accord and the hour has come, the stem seems 
to carry up the whole force of a particular race, 
the vigorous sap mounts, and behold, the flower. 
And like a flower, while force is implied in this 
flowering, it often overflows in beauty. 

In Egypt, the quality of the air, where noth- 
ing decays, seems to have moulded with eternity 
the thoughts of this nation, and their outward 
expression. 

In Greece, tender as the skies of Ionia, this 
flower seemed the symmetrical blooming of man's 
longing for an ideal in literature and sculpture. 
The Greeks made an ideal for us all. Our best 
eyes see the world as Homer saw it ; we our- 
selves seem to have built the Parthenon in some 
lucky dream. When in Greece and Egypt, a 
person of sensibility feels the influence which 
made them what they were still acting on him. 
In his single life then he apprehends something 



132 A SHEAF OF PAPERS. 

of the forces which went to make up the great 
life which we call Greece or Egypt. He under- 
stands with tingling surprise why under that 
delicate sky, above those great headlands of 
rock and seas of azure, arose the lowly but 
lovely temple of Theseus and the still lovelier 
Parthenon. Form there has a meaning it has 
nowhere else ; every outline is majestic, and in- 
vites the mind to withdraw from the garishness 
of color to its pure control. For while this 
flowering of a race separates it from others and 
makes it national, the great human heart is still 
at home in all nations. They make but a prov- 
ince for its possession. What they were we also 
could have been in their place and with their 
advantages. 

Every fresh year seems to bring the nations 
into more cosmopolitan relations. The world is 
spread out like a map before us, and time and 
space are annihilated as we bend in sympathetic 
curiosity above it. The longing for the future 
is matched by the hunger for the past ; and both 
shall be gratified. God does not disappoint his 
children, nor does he give them desires only to 
mock them. All our wishes are imperious pre- 
dictions of a possession not far off. It is not 
without a reason that Herculaneum is still sealed 
to us. 



THE FLOWERING OF A NATION. 133 

At the right moment the lost books of Livy 
will leap forth, and the lost poems of Sappho. 
Did not Mneveh keep its secret till the fit hour 
and the fitting man came ? Do we not see its 
mystic bulls read by the text of Isaiah, as we 
should not have seen them till now ? The con- 
fidence of so many that the Tiber shall yet, like 
the grave, give up its secrets, and the astonish- 
ing preservation of the bas-relief of the holy 
candlesticks on the arch of Titus (as if some 
unseen angel had had watch and ward over the 
place) be more than matched by the recovery of 
the august originals, — is this all in vain ? No : 
the good Father keeps his toys from his children 
till their age best suits the use of them, and then, 
lo ! an America, a California, a Japan. 

Is not this the very hour when the wonderful 
flowering of the Japanese mind could best influ- 
ence, and for most good, the Western mind? 
The bizarre thoughts, the picturesque, yet re- 
strained art of Japan, have flowed like water 
into all Christendom, and left on a thousand 
mantel-pieces a waif of beauty. Even with us, 
in our growing mental hospitality, we too take 
up the isles of the sea as a very little thing. 
They accommodate themselves to us now as 
easily as Mexico or Texas did once. They give 



134 A SBEAF OF P APE US. 

us a hint of how serene and at home we may be 
among the inconceivable wonders of the world 
to come. 

This flowering of nations becomes at the North, 
like its own flowers, a difficulty and a delight. 
Yet as the glacier will hide the Alpine harebell, 
so the heart-beat of a nation under the pole will 
not be denied its vital expression. 

Lost in these forlorn latitudes, all that the 
Northern races had done was for long hidden in 
polar darkness. 

Nor is the light about them too much now. 
When attentively considering the meaning of 
races, how each is fitted for its mission, and how 
it now strikes all that to the children of those 
Northern races is given, and more yet in the 
future is to be given, the earth and its fnlness, 
we are humiliated at our ignorance of them. 

Not without meaning, at the head of that 
swarm which beats and buzzes upon this new 
continent, God has placed what we call the 
Anglo-Saxon race. And these mixed bloods, 
tempered in every way by movement and colli- 
sion, owe their best qualities to the great North. 

There were found the romantic soul, the ad- 
venturous spirit, the persistent strength, which 
has conquered the world. 



THE FLOWERING OF A NATION. 135 

You find them all in the brief story, '' the 
short and simple annals of the poor " Icelanders 
and the kindred Northern nations. When Rollo, 
asked to do fealty at Rouen to the king of France 
by kissing his foot, said, " No, but 1 will shake 
hands with him," the seed was in him of repuV- 
lican simplicity; and when his lieutenant, in- 
stead of Rollo, agreed to kiss the king's foot, 
and in the act overturned the king, amid shouts 
of laughter, the fire was there, Rabelaisque and 
grim, in which in the future so many bawbles 
and shams should dissolve. 

In the airy dancing of the northern lights 
of poesy, the melancholy outlook into a world 
where death seemed needed to give value even 
to sensuality, we have the strain which runs 
through the English verse. Thence came the 
Elegy of Gray and the unimpassioned mournful- 
ness of Wordsworth. It is water of the same 
cup. It feeds our Northern souls, longing for 
immortality, and is worlds away from the spar- 
kle and worldliness of the Latin poets. Horace 
could not have written " To be or not to be," 
nor could even Shakespeare have given the 
Southern light which rests on the lyrics of Hor- 
ace, as the Roman sun lies on grape clusters, or 
cuts into bright relief the flowers of the Pamfili 
Doria. 



136 A SHEAF OF PAPERS. 

The Latin races are now being weighed in the 
balance and found wanting. 

They crumble and dissolve. They are a swarm, 
— they fight, pray, or work around a head, and 
in the evil hour die like smoked-out bees. In- 
dividuality, the possession of one's self, is not 
theirs. The wave of a sword or the lifting of a 
cross does not make them abdicate their individ- 
uality. They had none to lose. They were slaves 
to the passion and prosperity of the hour from 
the beginning. The Anglo-Saxon does not ab- 
dicate to his priest or his governor the tranquil 
possession of himself which makes his own con- 
science and judgment the forum where the world 
is to be tried. 

As a Frenchman visiting England once said : 
^' England dead ? No, not while each individual 
Englishman is so independent and free can it die. 
You can only kill him by making a slave or syco- 
phant of him, and that he will not become." 

Of course, to us Americans the most inter- 
esting event in Icelandic history is the visit to 
America. 

When in the year 961 Naddod, a Norwegian 
rover, stumbled upon Iceland, he planted the 
seed of one of these flowerings of nations of 
which we have been speaking, — a small but 



THE flowe\ :no of a nation. 137 

robust plant, which could face the polar blasts 
and drink life in the fugitiye summer sun. A 
company of Norwegian nobles, restless with the 
trop plein of the North and in trouble at home, 
profited by the discovery, and planted in Iceland 
a vigorous colony. 

To this day their descendants are distinguished 
for their stature, strength, and valor. But se- 
cluded in the long winter, letters and scholarship 
developed as one could not have hoped. Through 
their help the records of wonderful visits to an 
unknown Western continent have been pre- 
served. They had been for a century in Iceland 
before Columbus went there. In so small an 
island, where nothing would be better under- 
stood than these visits to Vinland, could Colum- 
bus escape hearing of them? That the country 
was his country, the India he was seeking, it 
does not matter to know, but to him it proved 
the land beyond the sea, which he believed in, 
and made his suspicion certainty. Nor is it won- 
derful that an Italian should not speak of it. He 
had his point to gain, and frankness is not a Latin 
characteristic. 

How we stare at the dates of these early visits, 
and fancy the strange slumbering silence of a 
continent before the coming of the Icelanders ! 



138 A SHEAF OF PAPERS. 

And the scenery they hint at, the same that we 
know so well, how home-like it seems ! How the 
vines of Yinland must have stooped to be plucked 
by the race, brothers to that one which should 
later sit under their pleasant branches ! And the 
great Eirik, vast-looming in his misty propor- 
tions, shows a fine figure against the background 
of the past. A sea-rover, a strong, fighting soul, 
one to delight the conscience of Thomas Car- 
lyle, is seen there in Massachusetts Bay some- 
where in the year 1000. It was a bud from the 
flowering of the Alpine rose. 

During that century and its predecessor great 
waves of conquest beat upon the shores of Eng- 
land from Denmark, and finally in RoUo's suc- 
cessors from the South. These men become 
our blood relations. It is their energy which is 
filling California and the West. The " Jotuns 
of the West" is hardly a metaphor. Their 
clumsy horse-play, good humor, and endurance 
came from the North. 

And to one speculating, it is striking that 
Christianity, the moral seed-force of the success- 
ful Puritan colony, should divide Eirik's life 
with paganism. On his first visit to New Eng- 
land he was a pagan ; he died in Massachusetts 
Bay (as is supposed by many) a Christian. The 



THE FLOWERING OF A NATION. 139 

Greenland colony seems to have had a fresh 
Christian life which reminds one of the Puri- 
tans. 

Their large and well-built cathedral still re- 
mains to prove their sacrifices and their devotion. 
And they might have founded a successful col- 
ony in NcAV England. The natives were too 
strong and many for them, and were not provi- 
dentially thinned by pestilence as for the Puri- 
tans before their arrival. The nearest approach 
to a settlement was under Thoriinn, a rich and 
powerful noble, who, on visiting Iceland, mar- 
ried the daughter of Eirik; and perhaps she 
was the cause of the failure of the colony. 
Against the plan of Thorfinn, she was among 
those who came with him to Vinland. 

There the colony must have at first thriven, 
for the company remained three years, and 
but for Freydisa might have secured a longer 
footing. But she introduced discord and blood- 
shed, getting the deaths of thirty men accom- 
plished to slake her fury, and returning to 
Iceland to be shunned and hated, but permitted 
to live as Eirik's daughter, — a Lady Macbeth 
of a north still colder and sterner than that of 
Scotland. 

It has been thought by many that some rec- 



140 A SHEAF OF PAPERS. 

ognition of the first visitor from Europe to our 
New England should now be made, — a recog- 
nition so well deserved and so tardily bestowed. 

A manly figure, clad in shirt of mail, and 
with the simple spiked helmet of the Norse- 
men, or unhelmeted and with his beard and 
hair streaming in the wind, while the wolf-skin 
flies from his shoulder, would be admirable in 
bronze. His legs should be wound with thongs, 
and with one foot leaving the boat the other 
should be planted on New England soil. A 
barberry, or other peculiar New England plant, 
could make the place of landing intelligible. 

The yawning void of the place where was 
ScoUay's Building calls aloud for use and shel- 
ter from abuse. 

A fotfntain there need not take up much 
space. It would make a centre to a formless 
square, and delight the eye and ear with the 
beauty of water ; and this fountain could be 
surmounted with the picturesque figure of Eirik 
or his son Leif, who was the first to visit Vin- 
land, as his father was first in Greenland. 

The fountain would be befriended by the 
Society for Animals, as man and beast droop in 
the dusty space there. It would make a shelter 
and gathering-place for the women using the 



^ 



THE FLOWERING OF A NATION. 141 

horse-cars, and a centre worthy of a square 
which so many streets command, and which 
some day will have a frontage worthy of the 
situation and worthy of the fountain which we 
hope to see placed there. 



142 A SHEAF OF PAPERS. 



A CRUISE OF THE "ALICE." 

TT is not birds only who have an instinct for 
building. Their lives, shorter than man's, 
condemn them to an annual display of archi- 
tectural skill ; and some of them, like the Aus- 
tralian bower-bird, seem to have in their breasts 
something more than the mere instinct of build- 
ing a home to dwell in, — the element of taste in 
the adorning of that home, — for they even in- 
clude in their notion what answers to our park or 
garden, — a place for exercise and luxurious re- 
pose. What one reads of their taste has a strik- 
ing analogy to the longing of man to adorn as 
well as build his nest ; and it is with delighted 
surprise that we hear of the relish of ornament 
in these little creatures, — a gusto ^ a preference 
for the beautiful, showing once more the wide 
solidarity of all living things. 

Some one has said that every man should 
have in his life the experience of building, at 
least once ; and indeed, here in America, where 
ancestral homes are not largely provided, many 



A CRUISE OF TEE '^ ALICE:' 143 

persons, if not all, do build, and that not once 
only, but some many times. 

To be sure, Dr. Holmes's charming " Cham- 
bered Nautilus," which builds its annual cell, 
may find its parallel in the May flight of un- 
happy New Yorkers to their new annual nests ; 
and to build a home upon the deep, a cottage 
with a keel, or three-storied argosy for long 
marine flights, is the happy lot of not so many ; 
but of late years, in our land, people of means 
have seemed to feel keenly the activity of this 
desire. Whole fleets of pleasure-boats and 
stately yachts move like sea-birds in and out 
of the indentations of our coast. 

The owner of the " Alice " felt himself bitten 
by this gad-fly of construction in the year 1866. 
He said to himself, " I will not take the leavings 
of some fatigued New Yorker, though I can get 
his 3^acht at half price. No. Let me encour- 
age native talent, and build within our own 
borders." 

He therefore selected a supposed marine 
though rural genius, who certainly had shown 
at least one idea in original construction ; and 
soon timbers were felled and shaped in a 
northern harbor, where the merry sound of the 
liammer might have been heard. 



144 A SHEAF OF PAPERS. 

The pleasure of construction has by-ways and 
hidden places for expense of which the happy 
architect is unconscious, till the sum-total of 
his bills brings of it only a too-realizing sense. 
Spring, however, saw, after the most gallant 
efforts, a shapely, solid, sea-worthy craft, sus- 
pended in air on its blocks and shores, and 
seeming somewhat to justify the wasteful cost 
of her christening. 

" Build me straight, worthy Master, 
Stanch and strong, a goodly vessel," 

and he did so. The charming lines which follow 
to describe the launching will always be enjoyed 
as long as the child of the forest is wedded to 
hoary Neptune, for there is true poetry in the 
movement of the graceful creature towards the 
arms of her lover. All the town was by, and 
many friends who hoped, through future happy 
days, to mingle with the new life which stirred 
upon the waves, were there to witness the 
launch. It was a complete success ; and health 
aiid prosperity were drunk to the new-born, 
while cheers and huzzas gave her God-speed 
on her way. "When equipped and ready, she 
fulfilled all the hopes of her owner, and left for 
her new home nearer Boston, easily out-sailing 



A CRUISE OF THE ^'ALIGE:' 145 

the friendly craft escorting her way beyond the 
mouth of the harbor. 

It so happened that the owner was soon 
called abroad by domestic calamity ; but before 
he went he gave permission to some young 
friends to take the yacht across the Atlantic to 
rejoin him in England, though perhaps little 
believing so venturesome a proceeding would 
ever really take place. But parent and relatives 
were weak before the ardor of youth, and, to the 
astonishment of many and the terror of some, 
the little creature was actually soon found to be 
taking in stores, and then quietly facing the 
breadth of the ocean as if she were an Indiaman 
or a Cunarder. Amid many hands upheld in 
warning, many solemn words of discouragement, 
with three stalwart, confident seamen, and a 
youthful captain, who has seen his flag fly in 
every quarter of the world, and a quaint Chinese 
steward, whose face suggested remoter foreign 
parts than it was proposed to visit, away the 
" Alice " went. Friendly sails leaned by her side 
and took the outer freshness of the deep in her 
company, till evening with its shadows recalled 
them home. Soon it was discovered that a 
favorite dog, by one of those mysterious intui- 
tions, or that secret intelligence of words and 
7 J 



146 A SHEAF OF PAPERS. 

gestures which animals sometimes show, had 
hidden himself away, through love of his young 
master, and hoping to see the world with him. 
It was thought best, however, that this loved 
member of the home-family should not be also 
missed, and he was consigned to a returning 
coaster, and reluctantly taken back whence he 
came. 

The accounts we have of that trip of the 
" Alice " are most satisfactory. It was thoroughly 
enjoyed by our young adventurers, for — small 
as the vessel was, only twenty-seven tons, and 
made still smaller by the necessity of stores — 
friendly companionship, the novelty of the 
situation, the glorious sunshine, and ocean's 
stimulating ozone, took away all chance of 
weariness ; nor was the voyage in itself long, — 
nineteen days from Nahant to Cowes ; and as two 
of the days were flat calm, it was really sailed 
in only seventeen, which was very well for so 
small a thing, — a sloop, too, not built especially 
for speed, but only as a safe, comfortable, family 
vessel, willing to dispense with the ever-recur- 
ring anxiety and vanity of " cup "-days. 

The hours of calm were made profitable by 
a good swim by the young fellows, who certainly 
were in no danger of touching bottom, and 



A CRUISE OF THE ^'ALICE:' 147 

could move easilj?-, having some five miles per- 
haps of sea-water under them to buoy them up. 
The sailors proved willing and able, and the 
party were so united in affection and previous 
mutual acquaintance, that they had whole stores 
of past experience to draw on for conversation, 
nor needed always the book, the song, and the 
cigar, which, however, were not wanting. The 
Chinese steward was the victim of infinite jokes 
and innuendos, and his mysterious ragouts were 
openly avowed to be composed of the missing 
dog, which, they assured him, he had not re- 
turned to land, but secreted. 

The vessels they met considered them as 
something abnormal, and one ship offered them 
assistance, supposing the "Alice" to be a long- 
boat survived from some wreck. When told 
that they were quite comfortable, and had even 
room to spare, this good Samaritan of the deep, 
who may have had his eye on salvage, opened 
his eyes wide with astonishment. "When, after 
doing better than their best hopes, still with not 
every bottle dry, nor all their stories told, still 
with fresh Chinese novelties in their larder, they 
sighted the beautiful Needles, and heard a 
friendly welcome come crying to them through 
the English foam, the travellers felt cocky and 



148 A SHEAF OF PAPERS. 

content. An English pilot, too wise to express 
astonishment at what he so little understood, 
offered his services ; but they were politely de- 
clined, the " Alice " preferring to consider the 
voyage a trifling jaunt from one port to another, 
and not of enough importance for pilotage. 

So they sailed past the beautiful shores of 
England with that fresh perception of the charm 
of grass and trees with which the wave-worn 
mariner ever greets the land, and an uncon- 
fessed appreciation of the sweet security of 
flower-hung cottages, towards the little town 
of Cowes, which is nobly supported at either 
end, first by royalty and all the graceful slopes 
and bowers of Osborne, and at the farther end 
by the picturesque, castellated club-house of the 
most aristocratic of all the yacht clubs of Eng- 
land. Royalty, no doubt, heard with interest, 
though unavowed, of the stupendous event of 
the " Alice's " arrival ; but certainly from the 
club-house and the splendid circle of cutters and 
schooners beyond it came the kindest welcome 
and hourly proofs of marine fellowship and re- 
gard. The owner of the *' Alice," previously too 
much absorbed in details of a painful nature to 
indulge in speculations as to the possible fate of 
his boat, had fled from trouble in London to the 



A CRUISE OF THE ''ALICES 149 

dear society of a valued friend at Malvern, who, 
on his arrival there, appeared at the doorstep of 
the hotel with a cordiality which in him was 
characteristic. But taking precedence of him, 
and dropping a courtesy in front of him, the 
landlady said, — 

" A telegram for you, sir ! " 

It said " All right ; and a nineteen days' pas- 
sage ; " to which the owner, interrupted in his 
visit, was obliged to reply, — 

" You came too quick ; can't come for three 
days." 

When he at length reached Cowes, he found 
the " Alice," broad and buoyant, sitting like a 
strange water-fowl upon the wave, amidst the 
narrow, straight-lined sister yachts who were 
trying to make her at home. Those three days 
had sufficed for putting h*er in complete order ; 
and as she was bran-new, she really looked as 
pretty as a picture. The sailors were refitted 
with fresh dresses from the shop of that wonder- 
ful Cowes tailor whose merits even ladies know 
so well that half the serge yachting dresses of 
the fair admirers of blue water come from his 
hands. 

The annual dinner of the Cowes Yacht Club 
was impending, and its semicircular terrace had 



150 A SEEAF OF PAPERS. 

been enclosed with bunting for the occasion. 
All the party of the " Alice " received invitations 
on a card from the club as big as a mainsail, 
engraved in the strong, weighty fashion which 
shares with every thing else in England a solid- 
ity superior to ours. The company consisted of 
the owners of the beautiful yachts in the harbor, 
several of them steamers, and certain annual 
guests who were there to amuse themselves and 
others by their familiar oddities and extrava- 
gance. On an estrade at our right was the 
commodore of the club, the Earl of Wilton, 
flanked by the Duke of Marlborough, and poor 
Lord Cardigan, whom I could not help seeing 
still riding through the fatal cannon smoke of 
Balaclava. They all were in full fig, with stars 
and orders. 

I was enjoying the scene comfortably, with a 
sense of unauthorized security, when a yachts- 
man to whom I had been presented said, — 

" So you don't seem to mind it? " 

" Mind what ? " 

'' That you are our chief guest, and must 
make the speech of the evening." 

" Indeed ! I never made a speech in my life ; 
can't conceive how it is done ! " 

" I will put you all straight, " he said; and 



A CRUISE OF THE ''ALICE:' 151 

calling the steward, he ordered him to bring two 
bottles of Chdteau Mouton from a particular bin 
below. "Stick to that," he said ; "don't mix 
wines, and your head will be as clear as a 
bell." 

It was so true, that I soon found my indiffer- 
ence to the future complete, and thought I even 
longed for the speech-making to begin. To be 
sure, we Americans have a tongue hung on 
lighter springs than the English. I remembered 
the stumbling and haw-ing I had heard in 
the House of Commons, from worthy members, 
proceeding like a Dutch galliot, — with plenty 
of noise and foam, but no speed. 

Soon enough, the Earl of Wilton rose, with a 
formidable suavity, and after the usual toasts of 
loyalty and those belonging to the club, the 
little " Alice " was noticed iii the most compli- 
mentary terms. 

" Well do you, gentlemen, all remember, just 
fifteen years ago, when we witnessed from these 
club windows coming in far, far in advance of 
our whole fleet, the beautiful ' America.' How 
much we have learned from her you all know. 
She will always be reckoned a famous boat in 
the yachting annals of England. And now 
comes another visitor from America, the ' Alice,' 



152" A 8HEAF OF PAPERS. 

— SO like a duck in her broad and round propor- 
tions, — and we give her a hearty welcome." 

The commodore carefully ignored a certain 
other yacht from America, whose visit had 
proved too " smart " for them. 

In reply, I said I had little diffidence in hear- 
ing compliments to the " Alice " for her ocean 
voyage, as I had no hand in it, being already in 
England ; but I accepted the courtesy for my 
three young friends at the other end of the 
table. I ended my few remarks by an allusion 
to the good- will I bore England, having so often 
run between it and my native land that Carlyle 
once said, — 

" You're one of the shuttles that are weaving 
the two countries together." 

" But now," I added, " there was a far more 
powerful agent of international good-will, silent 
but more eloquent than any thing I could say, 
with constant messages of intercourse, — the 
new international telegraph-wire." It had only 
been running a week ; and indeed the message 
of " Alice's " safety was one of the first that 
came to New England, for ever to be blest by 
the fathers of the young men on board. 

My peroration was warmly cheered, and the 
parson next to me, whose daughter was then 



A CRUISE OF TEE ''ALICE:'' 153 

married to a son of Boston, pronounced it, in 
exaggeration, the best thing of the evening. I 
felt for my sohtary effort the same satisfaction of 
single speech that Hamilton must have known, 
when he relapsed into parliamentary silence. 

In the speech of the commodore, " Alice " had 
been called " a duck " ; and so she continued to 
be called by Englishmen who came on board, 
where they were regaled with American whiskey 
and crackers, which, to them new and therefore 
appreciated, had that far-off something that 
gives a relish. What astonished them all was 
the size of the cabin ; for, what with the narrow 
build of their yachts and their flush decks, a 
cabin of one of their boats the size of the " Alice " 
would have room for only one man to turn 
round in. They thought there was a sort of 
magic in it; but all praised its breadth and 
brightness. I could well judge of theirs by 
comparison, for I was frequently invited to 
lunch with them. Their cabins usually were 
just amidships, — square, comfortable, and filled 
with strictly nautical furniture ; their state-rooms 
had a plug which admitted sea-water, a great 
comfort for bathing ; and generally the cabin had 
a pretty little porcelain stove which the coolness 
of England makes desirable. Their sailors all 



154 A SHEAF OF PAPERS. 

slept in hammocks ; every j^acht had its sailing- 
master, and only here and there was a gentle- 
man who sailed the vessel himself. 

Speaking of the difference of construction in 
the English and American vessels, the Earl of 
Wilton said : — 

'' If you are right, we are wrong." 

" Not at all, I think, my lord ; both may have 
good reasons for their fashion of build." 

In fact, on thinking it over, T have come to 
the conclusion that vessels everywhere have 
good reasons for their construction. It is not 
by the whim of one man, but the experience of 
centuries, that they have been brought to what 
they are, whether it be the junk of China, the 
catamaran of Brazil, the dahabieh of Egypt, the 
French fishing-boat, or the American clipper. 
Something in the climate, materials furnished 
for building, or the habits of the nation, make 
for each one its own fashion best. So, in the 
twisted cross-seas of the English Channel, where 
the tide and wind constantl}^ set different ways, 
often making the American cock-pit dangerous, 
their narrow, deep manner of build, with flush 
decks, is perhaps best. They fill the bottom 
with lead, often melted into its place, and they 
gain momentum and stability by it. Their 



A GBUI8E OF THE ''ALICES 155 

boats will bear a crowd of canvas, and will 
steadily, quietly get on, in a cross-sea, where 
" Alice," for want of momentum, would be con- 
stantly held back ; the sea would slip under 
her. But in America, buoyancy, the character- 
istic of the American yacht, serves her better. 
Where the seas are longer and more regular, 
in our bright, beautiful summer weather, our 
broad lifting boats, and our standing-room shel- 
tered from sun and wind, make, for us, our 
method incomparably superior to that of the 
English. 

The annual regatta of the club at Cowes 
came off a little later. Though " Alice " was 
pressed to enter, we had the discretion to abide 
by her ocean success, and not risk diminution of 
her prestige. Unfortunately, the start was as 
languid as summer starts often are. It was 
only on the return that there was something 
of liveliness. Still it was a beautiful sight, as 
a regatta always is ; though, by the by, the 
veteran members of the club always consider 
their annual one as a great bore, exacting per- 
sonal attention ; and they depute to the club at 
Ryde, which has the ambition of a parvenu^ to 
attend to such vulgar matters as racing-cups 
and huzzas. 



156 A SHEAF OF PAPERS, 

Once our captain was on board one of the 
yachts during a regatta. Yainly did the sailing- 
master descend to the cabin to announce that 
their vessel was winning. The owner bowed, 
but declined going on deck, while the American 
was burning with the sacred rage of competition. 
Nothing could better mark the difference of the 
two nations, — one loving repose and quiet, and 
the other only alive when some excitement is 
devouring him. 

"Alice" raced once or twice with moderate 
distinction ; when the wind was aft, it was ludi- 
crous to see her superiority. She slid away from 
great schooners of one hundred and fifty tons 
as if they were anchored ; then a flat floor and 
buoyancy told ; but it was not so when turning 
to windward against the current. We witnessed 
a superb regatta at Ryde, feeling a half-national 
pride in the gigantic schooners which came in at 
evening at a cracking pace, all their balloon- 
canvas set, for we knew how much they were 
modelled on what the " America " had taught 
them. Some of us were at a ball at Cowes, 
and could admire the acrobatic infirmity of 
certain jolly English yachtsmen, who, happy with 
the champagne which such times encourage, re- 
minded us of the motions of that wonderful 



A CRUISE OF THE '^ALICE:' 157 

zoological seal at London, which looks precisely 
like a sailor who had got both legs into one leg 
of his trousers, his flipper below being the part 
through which both could not go. 

We thought it our duty to try and make the 
tour of '' the Wight," as it is often enough 
called there ; we did so, glancing along its coast, 
and looking here and there up those gashes in 
its side into which a wealth of verdure has rushed 
to heal the wound ; at the beautiful Needles, so 
picturesque and lonely, which the sea threads 
with its long line of foam ; upon beaches whose 
many colors are wrought into fantastic and 
rainbow varieties of form ; here and there salut- 
ing a passing yacht, but not with the noisy gun, 
which is discouraged in England. At night, we 
found ourselves at anchor off Shanklin Chine, 
a poor anchorage ; and as the wind whistled 
mournfully through our rigging that night, we 
predicted a sea for the next day, which was 
only too truly realized ; for, when fairly off, the 
great waves held us suspended on their crests : 
we slowly ate into their increasing tumult till 
our tiller could not bear the strain, and snapped ; 
but we were stanch, and silently held on. But 
when we really found that we were gaining little 
or nothing, the order was given to " 'bout ship ; '' 



158 A SHEAF OF PAPERS. 

and the change was indeed surprising. On an 
even keel, and without effort, we flew like some 
kite down the long line of the coast, across the 
open stretch of estuary, and in something like 
an hour found ourselves at Portsmouth. We 
had a letter from Lord Lennox, giving us ad- 
mission to the navy yard and the iron-clads. 
There, no longer the glorious battle-ship of 
Nelson's time, except as a rotting carcass, is 
found, but great, dreary mountains of iron take 
its place, — mountains, indeed, so vast, so cum- 
bersome, with such thickness of wall and weight 
of metal, that one wonders that even steam 
should urge them into speed. Among them, 
however, was one clipper, the " Black Prince," 
with a saucy sharpness and slenderness, making 
it like a greyhound beside mastiffs. We were 
interested when we found among the clumsy 
forms one of the Mersey rams, — fatal bark, 

"Built in the eclipse, and rigged with curses dark," — 

which came from the teeming ship-yard of a 
too famous Liverpool builder. She had been 
intended for the Confederacy, but the Confeder- 
acy coming to grief, she was left high and dry 
in England. 

Wearing our New York yacht-club rig, we 



A CRUISE OF THE '^ ALICES 159 

attracted, on our exit, a crowd of admiring loaf- 
ers ; and the boldest of them, with great defer- 
ence, had the courage finally to ask me my 
opinion of " those things in there.'' When I said 
to him, *' Rather made, I should say, to receive 
injury than to inflict it," a most un-English yell 
went up, amid loud cries of " That's it, your 
honor! You've hit it! Have you seen the 
' Minentonomah ' ? she'd send them all to hell in 
a brace of shakes." I blushed for degenerate 
England, and silently withdrew. The next day 
we attempted to make the tour of the island, 
going the other way. 

The day was delightful, and the breeze satis- 
factory. 

We anchored at night at Dartmouth ; a little 
place with only a few cottages, and one of those 
modest English country churches which, among 
the thatched houses about, reminds one of a hen 
squatting among her chickens. We went to 
church in full uniform, amid the stares of such 
urchins as Punch depicts hanging round the 
doors. Saturday evening we had seen a little 
gig playing round us with a gentleman and 
young lady in it, who looked most wistfully at 
" Alice." So we hailed them, and invited them 
on board. Gladly they came, and every thing 



160 A SHEAF OF PAPERS. 

was duly admired. It was Admiral Hammond 
and his daughter, and they asked us to lunch 
after church. 

The admiral had given his quaint house, 
built of cobble-stones, and his spacious lawn, the 
stamp of a sailor's residence everywhere. 

A huge flag-staff garnished the lawn, and there 
were in an arbor trophies of travel ; some of the 
oddest and queerest character. The sea was 
visible from the house, so it would seem that 
nothing was wanting to the gallant veteran. 

After we had had our fill of pleasant things at 
the Isle of Wight, we started for France, run- 
ning down to Portland, where we slept. The 
next day we were off early for Cherbourg, a 
very pleasant sail, and we were in and anchored 
close to the town by ten o'clock at night. There 
we found Admiral Goldsborough, then com- 
manding our fleet in Europe, having for his flag- 
ship the " Colorado." Some of liis young officers 
spied early the next day the stars and stripes, 
and were speedily on board " Alice." We 
visited the town, heard talks from eye- witnesses 
of the famous combat between the '' Kearsarge " 
and " Alabama," but soon were off for Jersey 
and Guernsey ; for Admiral Goldsborough was 
kind enough to lend me his special pilot, reputed 



A cnVISE OF TEE ''ALICES 161 

the best on the coast, — a pleasant old man, and 
yet, with those strong lines the sea ploughs into a 
face which has to confront such capes as we soon 
passed, where a current sets up from the south, 
and meeting, especially in bad weather, the tide 
coming out of the Channel, makes navigation 
dangerous. When passing a certain spot, where 
great eddies — small whirlpools, rather — bHs- 
tered the sea for acres, and almost, even with a 
good wind, detained us, with his face full of the 
gravest expression, " here," he said, " when it 
blows hard, c'est terrible.'*^ 

We left Cherbourg with him early in the 
morning ; and, while he was getting used to 
the peculiar ways of " Alice," handling her til- 
ler as if it were made of gingerbread, so cau- 
tious was he, we spied two yachts — one very 
large, the other smaller — coming after us. 

" Why do they not hoist all their sails ? " we 
asked. 

With a modest chuckle he replied, " I think 
I know why." 

The fact was, that the two yachts meant to 
profit by his pilotage — known to be so good — 
without expense. But well outside, when the 
breeze took us, and " Alice " danced along, the 
pilot burst out into exclamations of surprise and 



162 A SHEAF OF PAPERS. 

admiration, and impetuously ran forward to kiss 
the bowsprit, while to his and our infinite de- 
light we saw the big yachts, little by little, run- 
ning up all they had of sails, and soon after 
gradually disappearing in the distance astern. 

We were comfortably anchored and on shore 
at Guernsey by four p.m. : one of them did not 
get in till seven, while the other was out all 
night. In such waters, if you miss the tide by 
ten minutes in entering the port, it is all over 
with you for a chance till the next one. 

We enjoyed beautiful Guernsey much, seeing 
some charming old ruins, a most wonderful fish- 
market, with the largest eels I ever saw, — con- 
ger-eels, — which, I am credibly informed, is the 
real turtle of the London alderman. Of that I 
have always had a suspicion, as the rich basis of 
the English soup is something we do not see 
in America. I have the fact directly from one 
who saw the eels and heard the cook's confes- 
sion that they were so used. Nor did we fail to 
admire the lady-like, fawn-like, beautiful cows 
of Guernsey. With that salt in the grass which 
gives the superiority in France to its pres-sales 
mutton, and in England to its South-down, with 
the ozone blowing over them and placed in a 
southern gulf-stream exposure, they have be- 



1 



A CRUISE OF THE ''ALICE.'' 163 

come the refined darlings they are. They were 
generally in small orchards or fields, tied to a 
stake, which being moved gave them a fresh 
chance to a circle of grass. 

When we got back to the pier, " Alice " was 
invisible ; but on looking over the edge, there 
she was, sunk, apparently, to the bottom of the 
sea, which had retired from round her. The 
tides are tremendous ; and when they volley and 
eddy round Sark, in a storm, the wildest de- 
scriptions of Victor Hugo are exceeded. There 
he has placed his pieuvre ; and those stormy 
caverns seem. the rightful home of such a mon- 
ster, not to mention that the big fish and huge 
eels of Guernsey market support its pretensions. 

One of the first things we did at Guernsey 
was to visit M. Victor Hugo. Unfortunately, 
he was away in Brussels, as he so often was, for 
literary reasons, as access to France was then 
denied him. The garrulous housekeeper, quite 
suitable for such a house and for such a man, 
escorted us all over it. Every thing bespoke 
the poet and the artist. Priceless, picturesque, 
incrusted armor and furniture were everywhere. 
It was a hric-d-hrac shop ; but one collected by 
a great poet, who loved what he owned. One 
got a vague glimpse of Notre Dame, Phoebus, 



164 A SHEAF OF PAPERS, 

and the fair Esmeralda, in seeing these trophies 
of antique France. Great hangings of arras 
fell from ceiling to floor, — true background for 
a romancer, — with mysterious chapels hid in 
leafy woods, dusky cavaliers, and every now and 
then a deer bounding by. The faded tints of all 
made it look like a dream of the imagination, 
before it is arrested and fixed by any effort of 
the will. 

On seeing these, I sternly looked at the house- 
keeper, and said, — with a familiarity, dearly pur- 
chased, of such haunts for insects, — " And the 
moths?" 

" Ah, monsieur I they are everywhere ; but 
M. Hugo won't allow me to have one taken 
down." 

We peeped out into the garden, and saw a 
stately lady in black pacing one of its alleys ; 
later, we visited the garden, but the lady had 
retired. We were told she was a sister of 
the poet. We saw from the garden's farther 
end a view which was a new page in Nature's 
beautiful album. The scenery was like and 
unlike the southern coast of France and the 
Riviera. The rocks were superb in form and 
color ; fruit-trees and others most picturesquely 
standing against a sea whose azure, if not rival- 



A CRUISE OF THE ''ALICE:' 165 

ling that of the Mediterranean, made up for it 
by exchanging its languor for far more sparkle 
and vivacity. One could readily understand a 
poet's loving such a place. We took note of its 
artistic qualities to suggest visits there to the 
all-investigating brotherhood. 

To us, as Americans, a room at the top of the 
house was especially interesting, — the second 
work-room of the poet, who had another one 
attached to his bedroom, containing a contriv- 
ance for writing at any hour of the night, if a 
happy thought should strike him. This upper 
room — singularly like, in its resemblance to a 
watch-tower, its simplicity, and brightness, to 
the work-room of Tennyson at Farringford — 
had a most striking drawing in it of John 
Brown, hanging dead; a mere indication of a 
man, — for the artist knew not his features, — 
but somehow made sublime, though suffering 
punishment by the intolerable vulgarity of the 
rope. It should always be remembered, to the 
credit of the enthusiastic foresight of Victor 
Hugo, that he from the first felt the full gran- 
deur of this man, and had anticipations of the 
dreadful scenes of which such a death was to 
be the forerunner. 

It was an easy run the next day to Jersey, — to 



166 A SHEAF OF PAPERS. 

us chiefly memorable for the odd associations a 
drive gave us. The English there are supreme. 
We soon found ourselves bowling along over a 
capital road, on the top of an English coach, in 
a climate that did not belong to England, with 
glimpses of scenery as lovely as heart could 
desire. One photographic picture of that road 
my memory will always retain. As we drove 
our eight miles in the lovely twilight, from our 
perch we again and again saw issue from the 
pretty villas along the road some charming 
damsel, with a silver salver in her hand, into 
which she gathered, after trying their condition, 
the figs which were sufficiently ripe. The fig, 
so insipid and distasteful to some, when fresh so 
exquisitely suave and bland to many, is certainly 
strangely unlike the fig as we know it in Boston. 
The two tastes are wholly unlike, but both are 
excellent. 

We sallied from our hotel to look at the town ; 
saw many charming faces, and talked in the 
shops, where we heard English with a French 
accent, and French with an English one, in this 
town of St. Heliers. On turning a corner, and 
coming to a public square, — with a statue in its 
centre of George II., I believe, — I seemed to 
remember having seen it before in some dream, 



A CRUISE OF TEE ''ALIOEy 167 

and suddenly remembered that it was the scene 
of one of Copley's best pictures, — the death of 
Colonel Pierson, with that spirited negro fight- 
ing at his side, and the women and children 
flying up yonder street, — a very noble picture, 
now in the English National Gallery, and by 
many esteemed Copley's best. How the sight 
of that square by association carried me home 
where so many of Copley's pictures are I In one 
sense he is the most ancestral painter I know. 
Titian's portraits, even in their grand Venetian 
dresses, seem breathing upon us ; but there is 
about Copley's pictures, in the somewhat hard 
flesh-tints, and the crackling, shining lutestring 
of our great-grandmothers, something of the dry 
remoteness of Egypt. Well has Dr. Holmes said 
that a family can build itself upon the possession 
of one such ancestor. 

As our time for keeping the pilot was techni- 
cally only three days, we could not visit, as I 
wished, St. Malo and Dinan, but soon sped away, 
most fortunate in our weather, for Cherbourg 
again. There we anchored, thanked the admiral 
for his courtesy, and soon received the visit of 
the pilot's two daughters, who were told by their 
father to adore "Alice," which they did. They 
then courtesied, and each offered a photograph 
of herself. 



168 A SHEAF OF PAPERS. 

The morning after our arrival, we made the 
best of our way to Dieppe ; but finding it too 
far for one day, anchored in the roadstead at 
Havre, — a ticklish position, as the night was 
dark, as few anchored there, and steamers were 
passing in and out. But it was not collision that 
befell us. While asleep, late at night I was 
awaked, and saw the whole boat apparently on 
fire. 

" I know what to do," said the captain. 

" And so do I," I cried ; and seized the water- 
pitcher, always on the table, to extinguish the 
flames, — the whole standing-room was on fire, — 
but found it empty, or nearly so. In a minute, 
our captain had thrown overboard by its rope a 
bucket under the seat, by which means the fire 
was soon extinguished. It had been caused by a 
cushion stuffed with chips of cork, placed in the 
binnacle to prevent draught, wliich had slowly 
accumulated heat until it set fire to the grating. 
As there was a good breeze blowing, and we were 
a mile or two from shore, the situation was rather 
serious. That bucket saved us. It usually was 
stowed forward, but for some inexplicable rea- 
son the captain had ordered it that night to be 
left in the standing-room. Who knows ? It may 
not have been all chance. Every day we are 




A CRUISE OF THE ''ALICE:' 169 

getting fresh proofs of watchful friends who 
interfere in their own mysterious way. 

" Ahce " was once in still greater danger, 
years after this, when she Avas run down at 
night by a gigantic coaster, which crushed her 
like an egg-shell, and knocked the sailing-master 
fifty feet from the mast-head to the deck, where 
he fell upon something even tougher than him- 
self, — the anchor stock. The Levite on this 
occasion who did this, when told as he fled 
past that we were sinking and that the captain 
was overboard, passed by on the other side. His 
concern for moneys he might have to pay was 
greater than any he had for us. The odd part 
of the thing is, that two days before, when shoot- 
ing at Provincetown in the morning, this sailing- 
master, v\rith a strange smile, stated that he had 
had a warning dream, in which he seemed to 
have blown off the middle finger of his left 
hand. I welcomed any thing that might make 
him more careful with his gun ; but it was not 
that which was meant. To this day, the only 
harm which that fall from the mast-head has 
brought is, that it v^hoUy crushed the middle 
finger of his left hand, which is now useless. 

We reached Dieppe in a squall, and had just 
time to drop our sails when a furious gust 
8 



170 A SHEAF OF PAPERS, 

pitched at us from the lofty cliff where is the 
picturesque castle, and we entered the harbor in 
a shower of rain. It was not a brilliant recep- 
tion ; the quai was deserted ; but two intrepid 
strangers, reeking in their mackintoshes, kept 
shouting, " Combien de jours de I'Amerique ? '* 
As they persisted in befriending us, and saw 
well into their harness the long line of women 
who were to draw " Alice " into dock, — for there 
is no good anchorage outside, — we invited them 
on board. They proved to be two most ardent 
French yachtsmen ; one, commodore of the re- 
gatte parisienne, and the other a gentleman who 
had at Dieppe both a steam-yacht and a cutter. 
They were simply enchanted to find themselves 
in an American yacht ; and no wonder, for the 
yachts Parisians mostly see will be found at 
Argenteuil, a broader reach of the Seine, where 
our commodore was a great man. All the many 
pleasure-boats there are built on the American 
plan, but are flatter, and carry more canvas than 
we do, justified by the shallowness of their river. 
If they upset, it does not wet them very much. 
They denounced the English style of build ; and 
the national animosity seemed to gain a fresh 
edge from their having got, through our help, 
as they thought, ahead of England. 



A CRUISE OF TEE ''ALICES 111 

" Alice " was welcomed at Dieppe. The 
American flag was run up at most of the hotels 
in honor of the visit, and we were soon invited 
to share in their annual regatta, which they 
considered an honor that we should accept. A 
gold medal was all ready with a suitable in- 
scription for us when we won. There was also 
a bronze one, very pretty, to be presented 
" Alice," ''pour son beau voyage transatlantique.^^ 
We were told by the commodore, who is called, 
I believe, president, that we must take a pilot ; 
and certainly one of the dullest dogs that Nep- 
tune ever had in any school of his, whether of 
fishes or men, was bestowed on us. It so hap- 
pened, that an unimportant Englishman, one of 
those gentlemen who do not own their boats, 
sent a formal challenge to " Alice," which 
" Alice " thought proper to accept. The day of 
the race there was some rain and a splendid 
breeze. The way "• Alice," starting side by side 
with her challenger, ran away from him and our 
friends' cutter and all the fishermen — for it 
was a steeple-chase, where every hack was 
mounted — would make an American smile, all 
the more when he knows that " Alice " can 
easily be beaten by any fast boat here. After 
we had turned the final buoy, the first, — our 




172 A SHEAF OF PAPERS. 

challengex not half-way to it, — our pilot, spying 
another buoy near the shore, insisted that we 
must make for it, and turn it, which, with the 
wind blowing as it did, we found it impossible 
to do. The prodigious donkey said, in marine 
French, — 

" II faut frequenter la terre." 

The truth of it is, that that little buoy was 
there for a contemporaneous race of row- 
boats ; which the pilot, if he knew any thing, 
should have known about. Hanging as we did 
in the wind so long, — for we finally discon- 
tinued trying* to turn the buoy, — we were 
easily passed by our rival and many others. As 
it was, in a quarter of an hour more we should 
have overtaken and passed them all. 

That evening, four sofas held four as mourn- 
ful gentlemen as could then be found on shore. 
No weed that ever grew in Havana could allay 
the disgust for a victory so lost. We were pre- 
sented with the bronze medal, with the strong- 
est asseverations of anger that the gold one 
should have gone to the Englishman, and such 
an Englishman. 

The bad weather continued ; and we were 
told by the ardent sporting president of the 
regatte parisienne that we must challenge his 



I 



A CRUISE OF THE ''ALICE:' 173 

friend's cutter, our only worthy rival, which we 
accordingly did. But the weather was so un- 
propitious, that after talking about it for a 
couple of days, we decided to go all together to 
Paris, where I, for one, had business. There, 
he of the cutter gave us a most sumptuous 
breakfast in his beautiful apartment, presented 
us with a photograph of his steamer, and accom- 
panied us, still in the rain, in a thorough exami- 
nation of all the craft at Argenteuil. Very 
American indeed they were ; and it is not bad 
for Parisians, tired of their everlasting asphalte 
and theatres, to try to revive themselves, even 
if it be in such a fresh-water pool as that. 

I was detained in Paris a few days, but thought 
it best, as the season was over, that '' Alice " 
should get comfortably to Cowes at once in time 
to prepare for her home voyage. But man pro- 
poses and the Channel disposes. After our party 
had got successfully some twenty miles from 
Dieppe, the inexorable and punctual equinoc- 
tial gales, which were that year unusually 
severe, struck her, and, unable to make Cowes, 
she ran to the coast further east, and anchored 
at Dungeness. The storm increasing, she parted 
her cable in the night, and had to make for 
a safe port. A despatch to the " Times," 



1T4 A SHEAF OF PAPERS. 

from their correspondent in Dover, gave an ani- 
mated account of her arrival there, on a great 
wave, twenty feet high, when no other boat 
dared be out. Poor " Alice " had little choice in 
the matter. She was soon still as a rock in the 
basin, and our young people could dry and re- 
fresh themselves at the Lord Warden. There I 
soon joined them, and waited vainly for the 
storm to abate. One day we saw go by from 
the Thames hundreds of vessels, and all return 
at night discomfited and baffled. But one is not 
much to be pitied weather-bound at the Lord 
Warden ; and we profited by our check to visit 
London and the Crystal Palace, where we saw 
another American boat, to which ours was a three- 
decker. She was called the " Red, White, and 
Blue," no bigger than a merchantman's long- 
boat, and though foolishly rigged like a ship, — 
she probably had something more for service, — 
she seemed really to have crossed the ocean. 
Foolish, rash as it was, those tAvo daring fellows, 
whom we found crippled with rheumatism and 
sour with a triumph which they could not turn 
to their advantage, must have really crossed in 
that little boat. A red-faced and bumptious 
Englishman expressed his thorough disbelief in 
their whole story. " Come down to London docks 



A CRUISE OF THE ^^ALICEy 175 

and we'll show you what's what ! " he said, 
which irritated our Sinbads when they should 
have smiled superior. We told them they should 
have said to him, — 

" Have you paid for your ticket ? That's all 
we want of you. Your opinion is of no impor- 
tance." 

So cantankerous had they got, that they would 
scarcely believe in " Alice," and in her having 
crossed, though to them she might have seemed 
a monster. There were two other insanely small 
craft which crossed to England ; one was cap- 
sized and sunk just at the entrance of the Chan- 
nel, but the other some of us saw at Liverpool. 
It was a raft, and consisted of long tubes of 
india-rubber, which were blown up on leaving, 
on which the raft was placed. It looked in- 
credible that such a thing should have crossed, 
and leads one to guess that ere long some Quix- 
otic, irresponsible Gothamite may yet do it in his 
celebrated bowl. 

When the weather cleared up, " Alice " ran 
for Cowes ; but as it was too late for a pleasant 
passage home, it was decided to let her sleep 
near the Medina Hotel, at East Cowes, in the 
most comfortable berth of any yacht about. 
There another captain was appointed to her, 



176 A SHEAF OF PAPERS. 

who found it pleasant and profitable to invite 
a fair young person of that neighborhood to 
return with him the next spring in " Alice " 
as her stewardess and his wife, which she did ; 
and though the return was twice the length 
of the outgoing trip, no doubt it did not seem 
unpleasantly long to them. 

Note. — Though the word "the" always precedes a yacht's 
name in America, it never does in England. I thought it 
would give a trifling local flavor to say "the Alice" till she 
reached England, and afterwards to adopt the nomenclature 
of the English. 



A CRUISE OF THE ''ALICE:' 177 



APPENDIX. 

I add the account of the arriyal of the " Alice " 
in England, which appeared, quite unexpectedly 
to us, in " Hunt's Yachting Magazine " for No- 
vember of that year, showing the interest she 
excited there at the time : — 

ARRIVAL OF THE "ALICE " — AMERICAN SLOOP. 

About 7 A.M. on Tuesday, July 31st, there anchored 
ill Cowes Roads, among the numerous yachts, a suspi- 
cious-looking craft, different from all others in rig and 
appearance. She was at once pronounced to be an 
American yacht, sloop-rigged, and in build and accom- 
modation a miniature " Sylvie." We ascertained that 
she was called the " Alice," of 27 tons, Capt. A. H. 
Clark, belonging to the Boston and New York Yacht 
Clubs. Her owner, T. G. Appleton, Esq., preceded her 
departure by steamer to Liverpool. The yacht brought 
with her as passengers Mr. Longfellow, a son of the 
poet, and Mr. Stanfield, of New York. The crew con- 
sists of three men and a Chinese steward, beside the 
master. 

She sailed from Boston on the 1 2 th of July, and at 
noon took her departure from Cape Ann, the light- 
houses bearing north, distance 10 miles. On Monday 
evening last, the 30th, she arrived off the Needles, and 
hove to for the night ; and the next morning proceeded 
8* L 



178 A SHEAF OF PAPERS. 

through the Needles passage without falling in with a 
pilot, and subsequently anchored in Cowes Roads. By 
her log she appears to have experienced some breezy 
weather on the passage, in which she behaved admirably, 
particularly in a sea-way, and was as stiff as a pump bolt. 
She has a cockpit, like most of the American yachts, 
from which you enter the saloon, which is most 
tastefully fitted up, and with all the requirements of 
berths and staterooms, &c., befitting a vessel of 100 
tons. 

She has been dismantled and refitted, and during the 
yacht squadron week went out of harbor and cruised 
about the Solent. She was entered in the R. Y. S. 
match, round the Isle of Wight, but as the additional 
" weights " had been put upon her by the English 
measurement, raising her from 27 tons A. M. to 57 
O. M., the owner considered it useless to compete with 
her would-be competitors, and therefore withdrew her 
from the match. In a subsequent interview with the 
commodore and members of the squadron, we understand 
that the owner, through Captain Clark, offered to sail 
against any yachts of a similar length to the " Alice," 
say 54 feet, for a cup value 200 guineas, each party 
to stake £100, viz. : once round the Queen's course ; 
secondly, round the Isle of Wight ; and thirdly, from 
Cowes round the Eddystone, and back. As there was 
no one who would accept the challenge, the " Alice " 
left those waters for Ryde, Portland, and Cherbourg. 
We also imderstand that Captain Clark further issued 
a challenge to sail any yacht of the " Alice's " length 
over a course of 40 miles for 1000 dollars. 



A CRUISE OF TEE ''ALICE:' 179 

After starring it at the squadron's regatta, where the 
little " Alice " had been the observed of all observers, 
she left Cowes on the 14th of August, under the charge 
of Capt. Clark, with her owner, Mr. Appleton, and his 
friends, Messrs. Longfellow and Stanfield, and proceeded 
to Ryde, where they became the guests of the members 
of the R. V. Y. C. during the regatta. On the 17th, 
through the auspices of Lord Henry Lennox, of the 
" Hirondelle," the Americans paid a visit to Portsmouth 
harbor, and visited the dock -yard establishment ; in the 
evening the " Alice " returned to Cowes. - On the 18th, 
she got under way, and proceeded on a cruise to the 
westward ; but as the weather was fine, with light winds, 
the yachts brought up off Yarmouth, where the party 
disembarked, and proceeded in carriages on a visit to 
our poet laureate at Freshwater, — returning to the 
yacht. On the following day they became the guests 
of Admiral Sir A. S. Hammond, Bart, at Norton. 

On the 20th, at 7 a.m., they again got under way 
with light airs, and proceeded down Channel, and in 
the evening anchored within the Portland breakwater. 
After inspecting some of the Channel fleet and the 
locality, they left in the forenoon of the 21st, and 
proceeded across Channel to Cherbourg, and in the 
evening anchored among the American and French 
fleets. On the following day they were visited by 
the French authorities, who proffered to them all 
the courtesy and civilities they are so famed for. 
During the brief sojourn of the yacht, they were 
visited by Admiral Goldsborough, of the U. S. squad- 
ron, and several of the French officers. 



A SEEAF OF PAPERS. 

On the 23d they left Cherbourg with a pilot on 
board, on a tour of the Channel Islands, and sailed in 
company with the English yachts " Water-lily " and 
'^ Zouave," and anchored at St. Pierre, Guernsey. 
Here they disembarked and paid a visit to Victor 
Hugo, thence embarked and cruised among the Channel 
Islands, landing at Jersey, Goree, &c. After sojourn- 
ing for a couple of days, they quitted those waters and 
returned to Cherbourg on the 26th. Here they spent 
a couple of days, and on the 28th left for Havre, and 
anchored in the roadstead the same evening. On the 
following morning, sailed for Dieppe, where the Ameri- 
can gentlemen landed, the yacht remaining in the har- 
bor until the 9th September. During the interval, Mr. 
Appleton and his friends proceeded to Paris, where 
they remained about ten days, seeing Argenteuil and 
the country around, returning to Dieppe on the 12th. 
During their sojourn at Dieppe the yacht was inspected 
by the authorities, and Monsieur le Maire presented to 
the owner a souvenir in the shape of a medal, in com- 
memoration of the transatlantic visit of the yacht. On 
the 10th they got under way, and in the evening 
anchored in Dungeness Roads. On the passage across 
they encountered a strong gale from the north-west, 
and a nasty chopping sea, during which the yacht 
behaved admirably, and crested the waves like a sea- 
bird. 

Owing to a continuance of bad weather, they remained 
at anchor until the 13th, on which day they proceeded 
to Dover. On the 15th they were again under way, 
and left with the intention of returning to the Isle of 



A CRUISE OF TEE ''ALICE:' 181 

Wight, having in their progress down channel a mod- 
erate breeze from the southward and westward. Having 
reached as far as Eastbourne, they dropped anchor off 
the town ; but towards midnight a strong breeze from 
the southward sprang up, and increased to a perfect 
gale, which rendered their position on the lee shore 
doubly hazardous. At 6 a.m., through the violence of 
the gale and terrific seas, the " Alice " parted her cable, 
and at one period, from the storm which prevailed, her 
position became somewhat critical. She, however, con- 
tinued to crawl off shore, and ran for Dungeness, under 
the jib with the bonnet off, it being utterly impossible 
to carry more canvas upon her. It now blew a perfect 
hurricane, with terrific squalls. 

Upon reaching Dungeness, finding, under the circum- 
stances of the wind, that there was not safe anchorage 
there for them, — the ships riding and rolling gunwale 
under in a perfect surf, — they concluded upon running 
for Dover harbor. Here we digress for a moment, and 
pass from the log of the " Alice " to the following in- 
teresting narrative of her appearance from shore, as 
recorded in the papers by the correspondent of the 
shipping and insurance office at Dover : — 

" On the 1 6th, at 2 p.m., the American yacht ' Alice,' 
of Boston, Captain Clark, put back from Beachy Head, 
and made for Dover harbor. When to the westward 
of the Admiralty pier, she experienced some very heavy 
seas, the rise and fall of the waves at. the back of the 
pier being nearly twenty feet. Notwithstanding, the little 
yacht came boldly on, flying over the crest of the waves, 
and in the most gallant style rounded the pier and 



182 A SHEAF OF PAPERS. 

arrived safe in the harbor, amid the plaudits of an im- 
mense concourse of people who had assembled to witness 
the performance of the gallant little bark, and the 
splendid manner in which she was handled." The v 

American party here landed and proceeded on a tour ; 

to the great metropolis. On their return they embarked, . / 

and on the 27th left Dover harbor with a moderate j 

breeze from the northward and eastward, with which | 

they proceeded down channel, and at 2 p.m. of the 28th 1 

ult. anchored within the Isle of Wight. ^ 

The American gentlemen having concluded upon 
leaving the yacht at Cowes for the winter, she has \ 

been hauled up on Mr. Ratsey's slip at East Cowes. \ 

They in the mean time will take passage in one of the 
Liverpool steamers for the States, returning here in the 
spring of the ensuing year. 



NEARLY A BANDIT. 183 



NEARLY A BANDIT. 

A MONG the many losses entailed by the 
bird-like flight of modern railways through 
Europe, one is serious. The machinery of the 
old novel is disturbed ; the pleasing terror of 
the speculating cockney is displaced by a tedious 
security. Except in Spain, where romance of 
all sorts lies as yet safe, as at the bottom of 
a pocket, everywhere the bandit is seriously 
threatened. He lingers, to be sure, like a mi- 
asma rising behind the immemorial plains of 
Paestum, and can be no more laid there than 
the devil of malaria. He floats down from the 
spurs of the adjacent hills like a mist. And 
there, even, the police can scarcely distinguish 
this disturber of the highway from the ordinary 
farmer. Indeed, the terms are interchangeable ; 
when the crops are bad, or time and land alike 
fallow, a little harvest is still reaped within the 
shadow of the mysterious temples of the Syba- 
rites. The police are in the habit of taking pho- 
tographs of all such malefactors when secured ; 
and I have a collection of them, purchased at 



184 .4 SHEAF OF PAPERS. 

Naples, with the names of the bandits, male 
and female, and the statement of the number 
of years for which they were condemned, or, in 
extreme cases, of their execution. The un- 
prejudiced artist in the sun, who executes photo- 
graphs of which so many brave men and fair 
women have with reason complained, is as re- 
morseless as justice to these evil-doers. As a 
mass, they represent so low and hopeless a class, 
that their faces seem to say that brigandage is 
natural to them. And indeed, when we think 
that only the higher summits of human nature 
are struck by the sunshine of morality and 
benevolence, it seems painfully possible that 
these reptilian natures should wallow and sting 
in the lower places of civilization. The world 
has advanced, but they have not. Their blood 
tells them yet of the old confusion, — of the 
border-line between the soldier whose pillage 
war excuses and the poor wretch who makes 
the war he cannot find. We suppose, to the 
last, the gendarmerie will still find somewhere 
its victim, and somewhere still the chances of 
life a play for the anomalous energies of rascals 
and murderers. 

But at the time of which we are talking there 
lingered yet freely over Italy the aroma of the 



NEARLY A BANDIT. 185 

bandit. Not long before, Irving had written of 
him in his " Tales of a Traveller," Anne Rad- 
cliife had found it easy to people every ruined 
abbey and cave with his band. And still, when 
the midnight log sent its swarm of golden bees 
up the shadowy chimney, the faces of -the circle 
would light with terror and emotion, as some 
fresh narrative of near exploits was told. 

I cannot say that I have seen a ghost myself, 
but I knew a boy who had seen a man who 
thought he had. So my experience of bandits 
was no nearer than a momentary terror which 
to any one would be hardly possible now. 

I was travelling alone, in extreme j^outh, 
from Bologna to Florence, over the Apennines, 
when I found myself one day in an odd com- 
pany. I had taken the chance carriage which 
my z;ei5^^trmo furnished me, — a large one, filled 
with people who seemed to know each other, 
and had ways of their own. They had little 
familiarities, such as belong to a family, — little 
confidences, and a common-sense of property 
worthy of Utopia. They would pass their 
pocket-pistol from one to the other in friendly 
fellowship ; combs would go from hand to hand 
in the services of the toilette, to fetch them from 
a common and hirsute entanglement to a com- 



186 A 8EEAF OF PAPERS. 

mon smoothness or half-polish in the want of 
any thing better. While light lasted, they 
would occasionally pore over a book which made 
the common tour, as did all things. There was 
a kind of freemasonry in their talk, a sort of 
argot^ if I might judge by my imperfect knowl- 
edge of Italian. They were pleasant and 
friendly with me ; and when I found out that 
they were a troop of actors and actresses of no 
ignoble reputation, I was delighted. It was an 
inkling of adventure ; it carried me from the 
dull highway of life into Bohemia. I was Gil 
Bias on his travels, and might even encounter 
Don Quixote or the bandit of my hopes, if fancy 
only had its desire. 

Late at night, we reached, near the summit 
of the Apennine, a famous and solitary hostel 
of those days, which had precisely the sinister 
appearance we read of in romances, and which 
we can still see in many an impressive nest in 
Europe which seems to speak of possible terrors 
in the past. Gladly did we uncoil our compli- 
cated extremities, to warm ourselves before a 
vacillating fire, bustling and plunging up and 
down the stony and bleak supper-room, awaiting 
the arrival of the minestra. 

There is something in the act of opening the 



NEARLY A BANDIT. 187 

mouth to put things in which astonishingly un- 
locks it for other things to come out. Most 
merry and hilarious were we. We were all 
welded into one fellowship ; and stories of 
theatrical mishaps, mutual badinage and fun, 
brought our cheerfulness to a high pitch. 
Something of its own dignity attaches to each 
rank, and their profession made each of these 
players unconsciously act his usual rdle without 
intruding it. The farceur was doubly succu- 
lent — and what gayety is so gras and oily as 
the Italian — in the prospect of the impending 
maccaroni; the bourgeois beamed with middle- 
class placidity, while the " noble father," and 
the damsel with curls, doomed to misadventure 
and rescue, smiled only from a superior emi- 
nence. I then found that my good people were 
of the troupe of the " Cocomero" soon to open 
in Florence, and I was urged not to forget them. 
This I certainly did not do ; and many an even- 
ing afterwards did I laugh till I ached at the 
homely pleasantry of Goldoni, and had my hair 
stand on end at the intricacies of a drama of the 
Drang und Sturm sort which Schiller and 
Kotzebue had already set gaily floating down 
the tide of time. 

We stretched our legs before the fire after 



188 A SEEAF OF PAPERS. 

supper, told stories, and invented farces till 
bedtime. Before that, however, a nervoas 
fellow having hinted something of the evil fame 
of the place, we looked under beds, examined 
closets and door-locks, and peered out through 
the doubtful glimmer of the windows upon the 
site of an extinct volcano in the neighborhood, 
duly commemorated by Madame Starke. At 
last, we went to bed, and were soon buried in 
that sleep which well-fed travellers have so 
fairly earned. The lights were all out, and 
there was but a dusky glimmer of darkness over 
every thing. Snapped off while floating on a 
great billow of dream, my broken sleep found 
me suddenl}^ sitting up in bed waiting for some- 
thing. At such a time there is nothing to jus- 
tify confidence or alarm ; reason is nowhere ; 
imagination has full play. What we think, as 
well as what we think we perceive, cannot be 
defined as either coming from without or within. 
The mind is a blackboard on which terror may 
draw any phosphorescent phantom. So I sat 
up, more impelled every moment upwardly, to 
seek the cause for my anxiety, leaving all the 
downy and pleasing plains of quiet behiud me. 
Of course there were noises. Every house as 
old as the one we were in creaks at night ; and 



NEARLY A BANDIT. 189 

the sleepless wind will be trying the wards of 
key-holes in a way the most accomplished burg- 
lar might enyy. At last I was confident that I 
heard a step, and then a fumbling with the door- 
handle. Stealthily leaving my couch, I went on 
an errand of inquiry. Not without cuts and 
stumbles did I get round corners I was not 
acquainted with, avoiding spectral masses of 
clothes which I had scattered at random ; and 
finally, the sounds still continuing, I adroitly 
opened my door, and ventured into one of those 
famous corridors leading anywhere and every- 
where which the tasselled buskins of fiction 
have so often travelled. The steps continued 
vaguely withdrawing, and I pursued. Suddenly 
they ceased, and in a moment I found myself in 
the embrace of one of the most robust spectres, 
devils, or bandits any circulating library can 
furnish. After a tug and tussle, terror gave 
way to peace, for I soon found myself at arm's- 
length with the bandit, — not of my hopes, but 
of the drama. He had fancied, as well as 
myself, that he had heard something, and re- 
solved to unmask the intruder. Soon my move- 
ments and steps had given authenticity to his 
alarm, and he fell upon me, as I upon him, each 
in the full confidence that a figure with dagger 
and pistol was within our grasp. 



190 A 8EEAF OF PAPERS. 

After a hearty laugh, soon smothered, not to 
awake our weary companions, we sneaked back 
to our respective beds, and slept soundly till the 
matutine vetturino gave us glimpses of an Italian 
dawn, with a faint pencilling of pearl on the 
horizon which might be the Adriatic ; and so, 
silent, sleepy, and waiting for the rising sun to 
sweep night's cold cobwebs out of our brains, 
we jogged on. 

At the highest crest of the Apennine there 
were thin patches of snow. While all the rest 
were asleep, or seemingly so, I suddenly saw on 
the snow a snuff-box. In a moment I was out of 
the carriage, and had it. I have it yet. It was 
coarsely painted, of wood or papier-mach^ ; but 
even in its little circle was a brightness of color 
which the North cannot furnish. It is a convic- 
tion which gunpowder would not tear out of 
me, that that snuff-box was the snuff-box of a 
bandit, which had fallen to the ground in some 
frightful struggle with an unoffending traveller. 

As tricks upon readers are not fair, let me 
supplement my tale of this bandit of the air, by 
two stories which were told me where danger 
had more of reality. By some chance, years 
after, talking of my Apennine inn with an 
English gentleman, he told me what he knew 



NEARLY A BANDIT. 191 

of its deservedly evil reputation. Its isolation 
from any house or town, the complicated and 
picturesque vicinity making escape easy, perhaps 
led some evil soul to consider it a fit nest for 
depredation and rapine. My Englishman told 
me of strange discoveries of a league between 
postilions and inn-keeper, sudden disappearance 
of parties whose friendless soUtude abroad made 
inquiry late and difficult, of traps and oubliettes, 
and, finally, of the revelation of the infamy, 
pursuit, and eradication of this haunt of vermin, 
which, for a time at least, left the majestic soli- 
tude of Nature without a stain. 

But what was better, he had had there a little 
adventure of his own. Posting, he had reached 
the place at nightfall with an invalid wife. 
After, with some difficulty, making her a little 
comfortable in her bed-room, with a fire of fag- 
gots, seeing her quietly in bed, he went down 
stairs to contrive for her a posset, which was 
the usual nightcap of these travellers. He man- 
aged to concoct something which would do ; 
and while it was preparing he went upstairs to 
communicate the good news to his wife. But 
near the foot of the stairs he met the gleaming 
eyes of the servant girl, whose face was full of 
warning and alarm. Going with him stealthily 



192 A SHEAF OF PAPERS. 

to an unwatched corner, she told him, with 
tears, of the ways of that house, and confessed 
that she was certain there was a plot to rob and 
murder him ere the morning. She told him he 
would find the bandits mustered in the kitchen, 
which he had just left, where his posset was 
warming ; and charged him on no account to 
sleep that night or allow his wife to do so. He 
soon contrived his plan, which was fortunately 
successful. He had lived long enough in Italy 
to know more than most Englishmen of its 
habits and language. He descended hilariously 
to the kitchen, where he found, in cloaks, a 
gloomy circle of silent figures, at which he 
seemed to rejoice. He said his wife was so 
nervous and delicate that sleep was indispensa- 
ble to her, to gain which he usually prepared a 
posset containing an opiate ; but fortunately the 
mountain ascent had so wearied her that she had 
fallen into a quiet sleep already, and that he was 
determined not to risk breaking it by staying 
upstairs with her. He therefore would make 
a night of it with them. Ordering the most 
expensive wines and brandies, which mine host 
saw not without satisfaction, he contrived to so 
bewilder, flatter, and intoxicate them, that before 
their revels were ended, he spied the russet- 



NEARLY A BANDIT. 193 

mantled morn coming to meet him over that 
high Apennine hill. 

To the furious, perhaps angry, cracking of 
postilion's whips he swiftly departed, leaving 
behind a somewhat demoralized group of boon 
companions, and one dusky damsel, whose dark 
eyes glittered with enjoyment as she saw the 
success of his scheme. 

Bandits, like other criminals, often, of course, 
are made such by distress and poverty ; not but 
what crime must find them willing agents, or 
they could escape her invitation. But there 
have always been in the world certain mono- 
maniacs who either singly or in groups murder 
for the mere love of the thing. Such are the 
Thugs of India, who are slowly being extirpated 
through British chastisement. And here and 
there the records of police courts show this pas- 
sion in individuals ; but it would hardly be 
believed, had not the case been fully investi- 
gated and confirmed by the courts of Leghorn, 
that, so recently as in 1830 or thereabouts, Ital- 
ian society held such a nest of murderers*. The 
records of this case — which, as given to the 
public, are terrible reading — show how far hu- 
man perversity can go. I first heard of it in 

9 M 



194 A SHEAF OF PAPERS. 

1833, from my Italian teacher in Florence, who 
was convinced that he was trapped and way- 
laid by these miscreants, and barely escaped 
through accidental good fortune. What he re- 
called of a visit to a certain house in the 
neighborhood of Leghorn, and the action of its 
inhabitants, could only be explained in this way. 
But whether he was right or not, it is certain 
that a club existed at Leghorn who slew indi- 
viduals against whom they bore no grudge, and 
without the purposes of plunder, for the mere 
pleasure of the thing. Before they were discov- 
ered and executed, the club had consummated 
the death of some forty persons. It was finally 
broken up, and all who were known to belong 
to it punished by death. 

Each individual made a vow to contribute a 
murder in a given space of time ; and they 
would watch their opportunity when the victim 
was alone in the twilight or night, or, as in the 
case of my poor teacher, Rusca, would be de- 
coyed into some safe den. They were students 
of anatomy, and mastered the complexities of 
the human frame to attain their dreadful end. 
Their victims would often betray no sign of vio- 
lence, and not a drop of blood would be shed, 
apparently. This they accomplished by strik- 



NEARLY A BANDIT. 195 

ing a steel instrument like a bodkin from behind 
with a mallet at the exposed part of the neck, 
where the point divided the spine. So my 
teacher affirmed, and so I believe the records of 
the court show. It is comfortable to think that 
such vermin should have been extirpated then 
and there ; but abnormal and sporadic instances 
of the unnatural development of destructiveness 
with which the history of Justice is crimsoned, — 
as, for instance, in the astonishing case of Mme. 
Gottlieb, of Bremen, who for long years pur- 
sued her insane course of motiveless murder, 
and so many others, which our readers may re- 
call, — all show how, beneath the peaceful sur- 
face of modern society, the wild beast in us still 
lies couchant and ready to spring, and indeed, 
in some sort, may offer some extenuation to the 
poor bandits of our story, whom, in perversity 
and wickedness, they so much seem to excel. 



196 A SHEAF OF PAPERS. 



LOST PLEIADS. 

' I ^HERE is scarcety any thing more romantic 
and fascinating than the lives of certain 
masterpieces of art. While one must for ever 
wonder to what receptacle or to what destruc- 
tion go the thousand abortive efforts of unsuc- 
cessful painters, — whether flame consume them, 
or vast and dingy garrets are their storehouse, or 
if, indeed, they do not go, among other things lost, 
to limbo in the moon, — some good fairy seems to 
preside over the fate of masterpieces. When we 
consider the ordinary calamities of life through 
time and the elements, we may well wonder that 
so many noble chefs d'oeuvre remain to us from the 
past. To be sure, they are preserved in royal 
galleries with princely prudence and care, or are 
treasured among the jewels of noble houses for 
generations ; yet, for all this, from time to time 
they will fall away from observation, get lost in 
some obscure corner, change hands, — their value 
having apparently perished, — until, as Mr. Em- 



LOST PLEIADS. 197 

ersoh says of Plutarch, they are again redis- 
covered, and are once more cherished among 
the delights of the world. 

" A thing of beauty is a joy for ever," 

in a more permanent and chronological sense 
than ever poor Keats meant it. Providence 
really seems to look after the matter, and is 
unwilling that the nobler fruits of man's genius 
and culture should wholly perish. He not only 
has an eye on the vanishing jewel of yesterday, 
and makes accident refund it, but keeps hidden 
away, as in pockets, the treasures and stores of 
history, often detained till their emergence from 
burial shall be at the time fittest for our compre- 
hension and just estimation. 

The very recent labors of Dr. Schliemann 
are perhaps the latest proof of this. Although 
the world is not as yet fully persuaded of the 
doctor's claims for his treasure-trove, — and we 
shall certainly soon know all about that, — it is 
at least safe to say that his discoveries of silver 
vessels, jewels, and pottery, found at different 
distances buried upon what credibility vouches 
for as the site of ancient Troy, must be of first- 
rate importance. No discovery of Le Verrier or 
Darwin more stimulates the imagination than 



198 A SEEAF OF PAPERS. 

these speaking ghosts of the past. While be- 
sotted Germany can " unweave every rainbow " 
of hope from the facts of history, and give us for 
Romulus and Remus — nay, even for the most 
glowing and beloved figure earth has known — 
only the cold embrace of the myth, it is delight- 
ful to know that our revenge comes from the 
same country that wounds us. Perhaps German 
pride in a German's good luck may turn the 
tide in favor of zeal for belief, which it has for 
so long a time influenced in the direction of 
denial. Poor Dr. Strauss is now old, neglected, 
and unhappy, and his career certainly offers 
small encouragement to any follower. Perhaps 
we may see Germany yet dancing with delight, 
like a child, as she flourishes in air the silver 
buckle of Helen or the golden bracelets of Bri- 
seis. And then, in her enthusiasm, she may re- 
discover the fact that time and distance are 
nothing before an authentic tale. Every thing 
is really as if it happened yesterday ; and 
indeed the whole historic age of the world is 
so very small a thing, that we may yet find 
ourselves in possession of all the necessary links 
in the chain of its progress. One line of Shake- 
speare, of Homer, or of Isaiah, speaks to us as 
if it were whispered in the ear to-day. And 



LOST PLEIADS. 199 

such unity lias history, which seems but the 
wandering and adventures of some Telemachus 
now growing to manhood, that the trained eye 
of the student in an antique object can now 
almost at a glance define the whereabouts and 
date, so plainly does it bear recorded upon its 
face the hour and the nation that wrought it. 
The remoter and obscurer stores of the past 
— such as those of Nineveh, the stone of Moab, 
the iron-works near Mount Sinai of the Egyp- 
tians — are just now fitly coming to light when 
the study and learning of the world make it 
best able to estimate their value. And what 
treasures, dim with the darkness of that early 
branching-time of the great historic races, — 
the Aryan, the Semitic, Celtic, — later access 
to the heart of India may not disclose I Till 
now, we did not know what to look for. Now 
we know, and we shall find it. To be sure, 
the fatal chemistry of earth will have destroyed 
almost every material evidence from those days 
of dawn ; but words fortunately are imperish- 
able, and they stammer and babble of their 
parentage ; and the loving ear of the student 
can hear the far-off murmur of the lands from 
which they came. We shall track man to his 
cradle, thought to its fountain, art to its lair, in 



200 A SHEAF OF PAPERS. 

the cloudy birthday places of the world. We 
shall finally learn all with which the Orient has 
dowered the West, — of the origin, order, and 
direction of the great Gulf-stream of human 
thought. It must never be forgotten that every 
genuine work of art is not only valuable for its 
own sake, its beauty or its workmanshijo, but 
priceless as one wave of current of inspiration 
which has flowed from the bosom of chaos 
and early night. Thus the study of art be- 
comes no longer a toy and a trifling of dilet- 
tanti, but hourly opens and lights for us the 
page of history. Indeed, perhaps that presid- 
ing, creative thought which furnishes man his 
instinct, ultimately means — in the crafty work 
of man's hands, and the preference of costly 
metals and gems over perishable material — to 
be laying hj for him against the hour of his 
manhood those evidences of his life in the world 
which would have perished without the help of 
the plastic arts. 

Leaving, as beyond our scope, stories of the 
fanciful and fascinating past, too remote for 
entire certainty, we notice that marble, bronze, 
silver, and gold seem by their nature far less 
perishable than any surface but those of the 
pyramids on which pigments are placed; so 



LOST PLEIADS. 201 

that, however deplorable, it is reasonable to 
find that all traces of Greek, Etruscan, and 
even Roman pictures are lost. Yet to this 
there is one notable exception. There is in 
the museum at Gorton a a unique specimen of 
what may have been the method of painting 
by Greeks or Etruscans, which answers to that 
of our cabinet pictures now. Painted upon a 
large slab of slate, disinterred by an ignorant 
peasant, who kept it for some household purpose 
in his cottage till accident revealed its value, is 
a picture of a muse. It is now the gem of Cor- 
tona's gallery, and visited by many as something 
exceptional and rare. Mr. R. M. Staigg made a 
careful copy of it in oils, and he assures me that 
it has a character of a rich oil picture, a full 
impasto, hinting at processes of the ancients 
which till now we ignored. That the painting 
of Greece must have been admirable, we are cer- 
tain ; for eyes found it so which were trained by 
the perfection of that statuary of which it was 
the sister, and much of which we, still possess- 
ing, know that earth has never matched. 

The idea, above suggested, of the probable 
recovery of much ancient art is connected with 
the fact, till lately little known, that every- 
where cities are interred many feet below their 



202 A SHEAF OF PAPERS. 

ancient level. There is something not quite 
easy of explanation in this ; the mere deposit of 
dust from the air would count for something ; 
and of course debris^ pulverized fragments, the 
fetching and carrying of earth on feet and cart- 
wheels, have much more to do with it. But the 
distance to be pierced to recover the old is from 
twenty to thirty feet generally. Such it is at 
Rome ; such Dr. Schliemann found it at Troy, 
and such De Cesnola in Cyprus. The proba- 
bility is, that if a skin of thirty feet deep were 
removed from antique sites of celebrity, — in- 
deed all over the Europe of the ancients, — no 
end of valuable art-treasure would be revealed ; 
and it will be done. It was only a few years 
since that Baron Visconti at Rome laid bare the 
old port of the Tiber, whose existence he had 
calculated from probability and early maps. The 
first time his rod was driven into the soil it 
struck a magnificent block of African marble. 
He has skinned since then one bank of the 
Tiber for a short distance, discovering price- 
less marbles at everj^- step, — many of them from 
quarries whose site is unknown or exhausted, 
— sent forward with the kingly inscription, gen- 
erally that of Domitian, to show that it was 
government treasure, sometimes rudely blocked 



I 



LOST PLEtABS, 203 

out, and at others with a polish they still retain ; 
done, as we have reason to suppose, oftentimes 
by Christians, who were then the galley-slaves 
and pariahs of the Roman Empire. 

The pope has used these marbles to repair 
the decaying pavement of many of his Roman 
churches. Baron Visconti is convinced that there 
is quite as much marble buried on the other 
bank of the Tiber; but the limited treasury 
of the pope, and the slovenly unhandiness of 
Roman labor, has as yet not attempted the re- 
covery of it. Perhaps the energy of the North 
and the activity of a free government, as repre- 
sented by Victor Emanuel, may soon undertake 
this ; indeed, it has been already whispered that 
the challenge which the Tiber has perpetually 
thrown to us to recover from its bed so much 
that must be sleeping there will be taken up by 
this enterprising sovereign. It has been sup- 
posed that the river must be wholly diverted 
from its channel ; but it would seem quite pos- 
sible, through coffer-dams, to get at the bed bit 
by bit, till all was examined without much dis- 
turbance to the river. 

What Finelli has done at Naples so success- 
fully should be an encouragement to imitate, 
and, if possible, surpass, at Rome. He it was 



204 A SHEAF OF PAPERS. 

who had the good luck to use plaster of Paris, 
where something like a human form was indi- 
cated, and, by filling a hollow space, thus to 
make an exact mould of many figures in their 
death-agonies, as every traveller has seen at 
Pompeii. But Pompeii never was much of a 
town compared with Herculaneum. It was 
modern, and, for the most part, a watering- 
place ; while Herculaneum was one of the oldest 
of Italian cities, famous for its learning. Many 
Roman scholars were known to have been re- 
ceived there by the scholars of Herculaneum, 
who valued them. There may we look, with 
certainty, to the recovery of much valuable lit- 
erature. 

A room, a library, with the bronze chests hold- 
ing the manuscripts which made their books, 
might perfectly well escape with very slight char- 
ring. One scholar of that day, who should have 
collected the treasures of the past, might, from 
that room, so preserved, bequeath to us many a 
lost Pleiad, perhaps outshining in splendor the 
light which comes already from the preserved 
works of ancient authors. There the l^ooks of 
Livy, and many another historic page, and there 
the verse of Sappho may yet be found. 

The plan adopted for the recovery of the 



LOST PLEIADS. 205 

masks of the dead is to be extended by Finelli 
to restore every thing which once had form in 
Herculaneum ; for the boiling mud which flowed 
from Vesuvius is a far better matrix for delicate 
shapes than the ashes of Pompeii. It would ren- 
der into stone the most fragile objects, of which 
heat and time have left nothing but an empty 
shell. He hopes by this means to recover the 
forms of household objects, architecture and its 
ornaments, of an early style, compared to which 
those of Pompeii were but as of yesterday. 

There is a quenchless thirst in man to know 
the. future ; that certainly will be gratified. 
Patience, and a few .years, must to all furnish 
that grave through whose low portal glimpses 
of the longed-for future will be had. But there 
is almost as quenchless a thirst for knowledge of 
his past, — 

" We look before and after, 
^ - And pine for what is not ; " 

and never was that thirst for the past so keen 
as now, or so amply slaked by discovery and 
speculation. Every day contributes something, 
for we know what to look for, and where to 
look for it. The world is man's great journal ; 
on it he has scribbled his adventures from his 



'206 A SHEAF OF PAPERS. 

earliest infancy ; and though the modern city, 
as in the case of London, may overlie an older, 
we do not despair of the earl}^ writing of the 
palimpsest being everywhere recovered. 

Somewhere about the time 1836 or 1837, Mr. 
Henry Wilde, of Georgia, a charming person, 
and author of the pleasing lines, 

" My life is like the summer rose, 
Which blooms and dies on Tampa's shore/' 

was a resident of Florence. He was an inde- 
fatigable investigator into the hidden places of 
the past, knowing every odd nook and corner 
of Florence till it became to him a sort of 
adopted city. He put up game of all sorts in his 
researches, and his enthusiasm was once pain- 
fully played upon and fooled by an impostor 
who pretended to have discovered many of the 
objects belonging to Tasso and his royal lady, 
alluded to in Tasso's poetry. I well re^^-^mber 
a morning when we met to hear unpublished 
verses of the poet which this friend had un- 
earthed, and with them to see jewels, miniatures, 
and little objects of interest on which much of 
the poetry may be said to be strung. Nothing 
could exceed Mr. Wilde's enthusiasm and de- 
light at the supposed genuineness of these relics ; 



LOST PLEIADS. 207 

and severely did he blame his cold, Northern 
auditory from Yankee land, for the chill wel- 
come they gave to what so much excited his 
ardor. But ^oon after, a commission was ap- 
pointed by the Grand Duke of Tuscany, by 
which the whole deception was unmasked. 
Swiftly the relics and their discoverer retired 
into night and chaos, whence they came. This 
was indeed no lost Pleiad, but a true will-o'-the- 
wisp of the marsh, which disappeared before 
the rising sun. 

The court sculptor at that time was Barto- 
lini, a man of a very graceful talent, and whose 
charming group of Carita still adorns one of the 
sumptuous halls of the Pitti palace. He it was 
who was placed by Napoleon over the store- 
house of his stupendous robbery of works of 
art with which he for a time astonished Paris 
and the world. Byron sat to him for his bust ; 
and not without a certain relish of paradox, 
Bartolini was accustomed to assert that there 
were two men he knew well who were cruelly 
misjudged, — Byron and Napoleon. The first, 
he asserted, was being slowly mined by the 
affection he bore his wife ; and Napoleon, he 
maintained, wholly averse to war, was only 
driven into it by the nagging persistence of 



208 A SHEAF OF PAPERS. 

Pitt and the allies in hunting him down. The 
judgment of a sculptor is rarely safe to take, in 
matters beyond his own art. Bartolini certainly 
thoroughly put his foot in it when he produced 
a replica by Raphael of the famous " Madonna 
of the Grand Duke," as it was then called, kept 
in his private apartment, and not seen by the 
public, who, therefore, could poorly judge of 
the value of Bartolini's assertion, that his du- 
plicate was the original and the Grand Duke's 
only a copy. A sympathetic and silent circle of 
friends adored tliis new claimant, while Bartolini 
raved of its merits, until suddenly the painter 
who had made this copy came forward and 
owned his work. 

Photography, of the size of the original, now 
gives us all the sweet and peaceful charm of the 
original, and twenty dollars will bring its pur- 
chaser nearer to Raphael than any thing but his 
own a^Dsolute handiwork could do. 

If Mr. Wilde was rebuffed and mortified at 
his failure to recover the genuine verses and 
jewels of Tasso and Leonora, he soon had a 
shining revenge. Mousing through all accessi- 
ble antique places, studying whatever he found 
belonging to the past he loved so well, he be- 
came convinced that the portrait of Dante by 



LOST PLEIADS. 209 

Giotto, which I believe Yasari and others as- 
serted to have been in the Bargello, must be 
still there, he associated himself with Mr. Kirkup, 
an English artist of more influence than himself, 
and finally persuaded the government to care- 
fully remove the whitewash from the Bargello. 
Beginning where they did, they had the patience 
to make almost the circuit of the room before 
they discovered what they sought ; but there it 
now stands, for ever a proof of the spirit of these 
gentlemen, and delighting all lovers of their 
kind with the sight of the poet's face before it 
was convulsed and torn in the battle of life, — a 
tender dignity mingling with a softness almost 
feminine, and with the sweet youthful look of 
one from whom the stormy future is hidden. 
Such was Dante when he loved Beatrice ; and 
we need this face to put ourselves in sympathy 
with that love, and to feel all the pathos of an 
existence which could change that flower-like 
bloom into the haggard and suffering face of the 
later portraits. 

Many years ago, I was accustomed to visit the 
small shop of a picture-dealer in Paris, where 
were certain small works of Millet's early period, 
nymphs and bathers, with a somewhat mundane 
charm which he chased afterwards from his 



210 A SHEAF OF PAPERS. 

pencil ; for his continued reputation rests upon 
a true but sorrowful rendering of peasant life. 
Millet is a biblical Frenchman ; and such hold 
their belief with a depth and tenacity in strange 
contrast to their lighter brethren. He considered 
the proletaire, the peasant, a being doomed to 
expiate some mysterious curse, nailed to the soil, 
his horizon bounded by incessant and daily labor, 
with little cheer from learning or luxury ; and 
so he rendered him. He once said of a fine 
picture of gleaners, — two hungry, weary women, 
snatching at the slender spoil that fell to them, 
while afar the burly farmer on his plump cob 
looked the embodiment of prosperity, — that he 
hoped he had so painted it, that it would be 
refused at the salon. He meant it to be too 
accusative of the difference between rich and 
poor to be endured by easy-going dilettanti. 

Into this shop I entered one day» and the pro- 
prietor, with a beaming face, said, " So you have 
come to see my treasure-trove ! " 

I professed ignorance of any such treasure, and 
he told me its story. 

It was the custom then in Paris to have from 
time to time auction sales of the effects of Louis 
Philippe, left behind him in his flight. Certain 
rubbish from the garrets of the Tuileries had 



LOST PLEIADS. 211 

now been so advertised, and our proprietor, going 
to the auction, had found rubbish indeed, but 
also one mahogany panel, so enormous that he 
determined to get it, if the price were low. He 
paid for it some thirty or fifty francs, and on 
fetching it home and gazing at the discouraging 
picture 'upon it, which proved to be in temper a^ 
something urged him to take it to his little 
backyard -^and scour it well. It came away 
immediately under his hand; "and now," said 
he, beaming more brightly than ever, and taking 
a huge pinch of snuff, " you shall see what I 
found under it." 

We went up two or three steps into a little 
room where this picture was enthroned. It was 
a beautiful, nude female figure, only having round 
its neck a slender gold chain, holding a locket, 
on which was engraved what had been recog- 
nized as the arms of Duke Sforza, of Milan. It 
was unspeakably beautiful ; deep, rich, and ex- 
quisitely pencilled. The foot alone, I remember, 
seemed to me the most beautiful foot I had ever 
seen painted. "Who is your goddess?" I asked 
with impatience. 

" One beloved probably of Duke Sforza, of 
Milan, and the painter no less a person than 
Leonardo da Yinci I " 



212 A SHEAF OF PAPERS, 

He mentioned the names of several competent 
experts who had authenticated it ; among the 
rest an English amateur of distinction, whom, 
meeting afterwards, I consulted as to the pic- 
ture. 

" Undoubtedly genuine," he said, " and 
painted over with intention, when the reaction 
from the wicked Abbe du Bois and the Regence 
had caused an edict to have all nudities re- 
moved or destroyed." 

This picture was apparently painted over in a 
careless manner to save it ; but the frequent 
revolutions of France, and possible perishing 
of the secret through the death of the artist, 
make its disappearance and recovery intelligi- 
ble. " Ary Scheffer thinks every thing of it," 
he said. 

"Does he so?" cried I. "I dine with him 
to-day, and I will ask him." 

I did so, and he said he had no reason to 
doubt its genuineness, and thought the govern- 
ment would be justified in giving fifty thousand 
or a hundred thousand francs to recover their 
own. What became of it I never knew. When, 
after a few years, I again visited the picture- 
dealer, he and his shop had disappeared, with 
the Millets I so much regret not having bought. 



LOST PLEIADS. 213 

ffc is not apparently among the pictures of the 
Louvre ; but its exquisite beauty may be freezing 
through the long winter in some Russian gallery, 
or some omniverous milor may have snatched it 
away to his solitary castle, perhaps there again 
to be lost and rediscovered in the perpetual 
mutations of human affairs ; for destiny gives 
reverses of fortune not merely to the children 
of men, but constantly also to art's shadowy 
representations of them. 

Many men by the possession of some beauti- 
ful woman have become mad monomaniacs of a 
treasure too much for their peace of mind. An 
Englishman, Mr. Maurice Moore, is in danger of 
having his life and affections absorbed by a little 
Raphael, of which he is the accidental and fortu- 
nate proprietor. He bought it for a small sum 
in London at an auction sale, and was induced, 
I believe, to offer it to the National Gallery for 
what, for a Raphael, is a moderate price. It was 
not taken up, and every day, hj gloating over its 
charms, he becomes more enamoured of it, and 
rejoices to think that it is not snatched from 
him. Indeed, his life would be empty and poor 
without it, and he had better continue to wear 
it in his heart of hearts, playing with prospects 



214 A SHEAF OF PAPERS. 

of sale, than see it depart and so leave his life 
unillumined, un-Raphaeled for ever. But it is 
proper to say, that apparently it is his darling 
wish to have it go to America ; and all American 
artists who have seen it desire the same thing. 
Cannot some benevolent enthusiast, when dying, 
not 

" Endow a college or a cat/' 

but purchase it for us, and so for ever associate 
his name with one of the few shining Pleiads in 
the firmament of Art ? 

I should like to tell other such stories ; their 
romance and picturesqueness pique every one, — 
to speak of MacPherson and his Sasso Ferratos ; 
of his Michel Angelo, discovered so strangely in 
one of the many dust-heaps of waifs and things 
lost ; and of the striking Michel Angelo of Lord 
Taunton, also drawn up like a pearl through the 
waters of Time, and, though unfinished, with all 
the grandeur of that incomparable hand, now 
adding dignity to London's National Gallery. 
But a magazine article must not be an encyclo- 
paedia, and a little is as good as too much ; and, 
above all, a story-teller, to leave his auditory hun- 
gry, should always leave something unsaid. 



ABT-CEAT. 



215 



ART-CHAT. 



I. 

TT'ACH nation is but a province in the great 
^^ kingdom of Art. Each has its special 
chapel (to express it by another metaphor) in 
the great cathedral. Every day we are learning 
more to contemplate the unity of our race, and 
to bring together as to a focus, round a common 
centre, the varied art-offerings of the nations. 
Over and above the loyalty to the Queen Beau- 
tiful, the central ideal, which is the eidolon of 
the mind, a shadow of the divine model after 
which the Deity has worked ; above and beyond 
this, we discover that each nation in art has, 
so to say, the flavor of the soil. Like its wine, 
it speaks of its sunshine, its temperature, and 
ripens, as does the wine, with a more benignant 
or more acidulated flavor. 

Each nation, in producing thus its expression, 
is unconscious of it. It does not aim at it any 
more than the Frenchman gesticulates, or the 
Englishman sulks, of malice prepense. And yet 



216 A SHEAF OF PAPERS. 

how powerfully do we notice the differences ! 
The German art, — is it not as different from the 
French or Italian as all are from the English? 
Each has its merits and its shortcomings. The 
careful, cold, professional method of Germany 
— its want of color and nuance of expression — 
is compensated for by clear intention, and pow- 
erful, correct design, and sometimes by grace 
and tenderness. Its fatal want is want of color. 
One feels that the sun is ingrat in which such 
creations found their birth. How contrasted 
with Venice ! in which, from waU and water, 
the color is repercussed and sent back, the light 
flashing even into the shadow, till the subject of 
her art swims in a tender atmosphere of gold 
and splendor. 

I have seen a rug from Siberia so tempered 
in its hues, that at once you were reminded of 
Boreal pallor and of thickening blood. 

How India burns with her sun of flame in the 
quivering and burnished patterns of her silks 
and shawls ! 

We~ thus take up more than we know of 
pleasure from contemplation of foreign art, — a 
something transcendental and obscure, which 
mingles with it the genius loci or the flavor of 
the soil. 



ABT-CHAT. 217 

In the pretty landscapes of Lambinet, this 
ekes out, and completes the impression. Some- 
tliing of his delightful land, more than was in 
his hand or on his palette, comes wafted to us. 
The same scene painted equally well by an 
American would not quite so impress us. Some- 
thing of our saturnine and despondent climate 
would abate the placidity of those borders of 
the Seine which Lambinet has painted so pret- 
tily. 

And these considerations make us to under- 
stand how much, till now, an alien in art has 
been America. Europe knows her not: her 
secrets of beauty, her surprises, are quite ruled 
out of court. Her autumnal glow in its coat of 
many colors is to Europe barbaric and untrue. 
Like poor Joseph, criticism there would put it 
into the pit of condemnation. 

Our pitch of light, in intensity so far beyond 
the subdued splendor even of Italy, no pigment 
can follow. When it tries to, Europe cries out, 
" Chalkiness and crudity." 

The eye can almost bear the full fervor of the 
sun of Europe, when the second gradation here 
upon a summer cloud makes one wink and 
dodge. And then, spent by a thousand drains 
of anxiety and care, our nerves have not -the 
10 



218 A SHEAF OF PAPERS. 

head of quiet, tlie calm pool of strength, whence 
to draw quiet and refreshment for others ; and 
too often our pictures do not cheer. The poor 
artist was not cheery, and how could his pictures 
be so ? So we Americans get to look with lov- 
ing and envious eyes at the bright, happy 
pictures of France, and to be a little overshamed 
at the homelier efforts of our people, for which 
we learn to blush as for country cousins. 

And yet it cannot be otherwise. We must 
paint with the nerves we have, and the nature 
we have. This is at times so austere, and we 
are so the sport of whirling winds, that I once 
heard a person express surprise that we cele- 
brated at all by pictures our calamity, and did 
not repudiate a nature which has so much of 
the step-mother and the tyrant. 

All these thoughts make it the more natural 
that we should remember a noble nature, a noble 
artist, who, among the first, extracted sweets 
where others could not find them, and by his 
character and life strengthened and cemented 
those art-foundations which our metropolis is so 
sedulously laying. 

Let us share with New York in the grief and 
the honors which are now following the loss of 
her beloved John F. Kensett. 



1 



ABT-CHAT. 219 

His pictures are not rare; and all may see 
in their grace and sweetness through what a 
nature was filtered, how sunny and how pure, 
the lymph which the eternal springs of Nature 
brought for his refreshment and delight. 

His manner was not that of the French. He 
had not studied in their school. England, which 
furnished him his first studies, and bought his 
first picture, was his art-mother. 

But he soon found an American art-mother of 
his own. A proud and loyal son to her he was, 
and made us all more loving and reverential to 
that mother, — the only one we have as Ameri- 
cans. So much and so feelingly has been said 
of him at meetings in New York, that we will 
not, as we should delight to do, linger in con- 
sideration of his character and his merits as an 
artist. But in connection with the foregoing 
suggestions of the separation of nations from 
the great whole of Art, — niches in its vast 
temple, — we must allude to the importance of 
the life of Kensett in helping us to found our 
school and to learn to love our nature. 

The remarkable affection and pride with which 
both the artist and his works are regarded was 
shown by the posthumous sale of his sketches. 
These numbered over seven hundred: and in 



220 .A SEEAF OF PAPERS. 

a competition where were gathered all that New 
York possesses of art and culture, to the end 
was preserved the generous standard of value, 
which, in another instance, might have flagged. 

The total amount of the sale considerably 
exceeded a hundred and thirty thousand dollars ; 
and yet his valuable last season's work, and his 
choice collection of contemporary artists, are not 
included. 

Such a result is honorable to American art. 
It proves that foreign excellence does not kill 
appreciation of our own. Only one or two such 
sales have matched the value of this. 

The influence he exerted was extraordinary. 
He kindled in others his own enthusiasm, and had 
round him a group of younger men who drew 
inspiration from his labors. His may be consid- 
ered the most esteemed rendering of our land- 
scape. Delicate and tender, its excesses of color 
fusing into the most aerial grays, he found 
the secret of Nature's charm ; and the woody 
steeps of the Hudson, and the choral surges of 
Newport, will not soon forget their most favored 
lover. 

The interest of the De Cesnola collection is 
from this unity, yet diversity, in art. It is the 
go-between and link of schools and nationalities 



ABT-CHAT: 



221 



from the shores of the fruitful Mediterranean 
around the Isle of Cyprus, navelled between the 
Egyptian, the Greek, the Phoenician, and Assyr- 
ian art-schools. 

It is certainly odd that we should begin by 
the end, possessing the intermediary before we 
do the great consummate works of these nations. 
Still Europe envies us our purchase ; and many 
photographs of the best specimens are made for 
her amateurs. 

We must learn to find the value of such a 
collection not in its faultless masterpieces, for it 
has none, but in its historic interest, — the key 
and explanation of that movement of mind 
which produced all modern art. There is but 
one current of European art-history ; and these 
works come from near its source, — with the 
naivetS of infancy and barbaric worship, but 
with predictions in them of the greatest and 
most sublime after-growth. 



222 A 8EEAF OF PAPERS, 



II. 



Races have their gifts and their limitations. 
With some, as with the Greeks, art reaches per- 
fection ; with others it amounts to a fraction of 
a great whole, — a niche within the temple ; and 
we feel a French, an Italian, a German, or a 
Japanese work to be a modification of pure 
truth, by the flavor of their several nationahties. 
In the main, they do what they can do, and not 
much beyond. Least of all can they do it by 
trying hard. Taine has admirably stated, in his 
several books on art, how in each country art 
is the highest expression of its life, the flower 
that overtops all the ruder leaves, which with 
the stem but bear this quintessence into the sky 
to be loved and admired of men. It is never 
truer than when most national. 

A great many flne things are said, nowadays, 
on this matter, mostly true, and connecting art- 
development with the various threads of emi- 
gration, and giving the conquest of the arts 
chiefly to the Aryan race. A most striking 
illustration from the far past, heralding with 
faintest dawn-shine the meridian splendors of 
the future, can be seen by any one in the British 



ART-GHAT. 223 

Museum. It appears that a French gentleman, 
having found on his estate a cave filled with 
various fossil relics, offered them to his own 
government. That government, generally so 
quick to profit by any thing which can extend 
its art-treasures, here delayed so long that fortu- 
nate England obtained the prize. A portion of 
the cave-relics, preserved as in situ, are shut in 
a glass case, looking through which one sees, as 
found, a bone. That bone is the horn of the 
reindeer, upon which a pre-e very thing artist has 
etched the flying figure of a reindeer itself. No 
intelligent eye can fail to understand this bound- 
less hint of the future, and distinguish its differ- 
ence from the efforts like it done by the eternal 
childhood of the savage races. 

In the work called "L'Homme Fossile " is 
engraved an etching from another bone. That 
represents, with great spirit, a mastodon plung- 
ing, and at full speed, from the chase, and rear- 
ing, what even Dr. Warren did not know he 
possessed, his mane, in terror. The drawing on 
his slate by one of Dr. Howe's idiots in South 
Boston is riot more marked in its limitation than 
is the savage outline as compared with these 
free suggestive Aryan designs. 

What shall we say of American art and its 



224 A SHEAF OF PAPERS. 

future ? Bartolini always predicted for us a 
brilliant one, because we are not encumbered by 
the spoils of time, — our Muse, like the Roman 
girl, buried under the thousand bronze bucklers 
of the past. At any rate, we are here com- 
mingling, as in a vast basin, the streams of 
all the races, the electricity intertwining in 
a thousand rivulets from all European bloods. 
Who can say what sparks, bright with new 
power, may not be struck from their collision ? 
And one of the influences which Taine always 
counts in the art-history of a race, the climate, 
is here a new one, stimulating and exhausting 
all the human possibilities within us. So that 
now, provincials as we are, we may have an 
art-history of our own. Till now our English 
clumsiness sticks to us, and we are but children, 
babbling of Sir Joshua and Wilkie, when haply 
we may yet have something as good of our own. 
This weaning and oscillation from the parent 
stock is strikingly shown by our relish of works 
from across the Channel. As our physicians 
gave up the training of England for that of 
Paris, so a kind of distaste even of English 
methods of art, and the keenest enjoyment of 
that of the best French school, has of late come 
about. An American lady may almost be said 



ART-GHAT, 225 

to be the ideal figure for whom the French 
modiste slaves and dreams ; and so, perhaps, 
nowhere in the world is a relish of the beautiful 
works of the best Frenchmen more enjoyed than 
here. We are of their academy, and are proud 
to send our children to their schooling. 

But here is the point for which we have writ- 
ten this article. It can absolutely be shown that 
the method of the French, as compared with that 
of other European nations, is the best. The, 
question is, how to apply it here. In some de- 
gree, that method is so commingled with the, 
facts and beauties of French nature, that, in 
some cases, in the effort to bring away the true 
method, one exports French atmosphere, French 
nature, and French figures as well. That is 
about where we are. On the one side, an un- 
travelling crowd of hopeful young artists, seeing 
their own unschooled ways neglected for these 
happy men* who have sat at the feet of Troy on 
and Lambinet, in their opinion somewhat cari- 
caturing our native scenery, are not content. 
Their friends of the press bark and bite up and 
down the columns of the art-articles of our even- 
ing papers, and foment the quarrel. They call 
this good method of the French " Frenchy," 
and are wrong ; and complain that an American 
10* o 



226 A SHEAF OF PAPERS. 

elm, as painted by their rivals, looks like a 
French oak, and they are right. They must 
really understand that the clever men have all 
gone over with adhesion to the method of the 
best French painters. They must not fight 
against it, for it is good. They must them- 
selves learn its genuine base, at one with Nat- 
ure's, and emulate, instead of depreciating, the 
travelled student. Still, it is most natural and 
excusable that all this should be. When we 
have a stately and towering school of our own, 
based upon the good landscape and figure- 
methods of France, and with an American use 
of American materials, all will be reconciled. 
In the good time coming, some Raphael, of 
whom AUston was the herald, — Allston, with 
his eclecticism from all the excellent in the past, 
with his deep and subtle color, and his moral 
elevation, — that Raphael, or that Claude, when 
come, will see all these little animosities hushed 
about his feet, amid the pride and exultation of 
a universal welcome. 



THE NEW ENGLAND CONSCIENCE. 227 



THE NEW ENGLAND CONSCIENCE. 

TN speaking of this subject, we set aside all 
general considerations of the human con- 
science, — that unabilical tie to the great mother- 
spirit of the universe, the silent voice of Heaven 
in the breast, — but merely refer to its action, 
more or less regular, induced by the conditions 
of New England existence. Nowhere more 
than here is the monition of duty imperative 
and active ; and often in delicate natures this 
sensibility to the right becomes morbid and 
excessive. There are certain fanciful sugges- 
tions as to the cause of this which it is in- 
teresting to note. Phrenology — a science, if it 
be allowed the name, unprovable and modified by 
elements difficult to discover — here assists us. 
It places the love of self, technically called self- 
esteem, a little back of the summit of the head. 
This gives the attitude of pride, the carriage of 
hauteur, the head slightly thrown back, and 
an imperious air. The peacock, oddly enough, 



228 A SHEAF OF PAPERS. 

has a tuft at the precise place of it. This bird 
seems intended to caricature this quality; for 
while justified in self-complacency by the eyes 
of Argus, the splendor of its tail, its voice, harsh 
and inharmonious, seems always to mock this 
beauty with discord. Self-esteem, according 
to the phrenologists, considering man's double 
brain as one, is flanked on either side by con- • 
scientiousness. This is the precise position it 
should occupy ; for when the sensibility to self 
is most acute, the attendant monitory finger is 
most needed to guide and direct. 

Considering man as the victim of physical 
conditions, it may be noticed that there is 
something in this climate of stimulation to 
one's regard of self, — an introversion of the 
eye upon life, a perpetual consciousness of 
one's nature, and an anxiety to satisfy con- 
science. This mutual interaction between self 
and conscience, so often excessive, is the cause 
of an anxiety to do well which never can be laid 
at rest ; in highest natures it makes all life but a 
shortcoming. Now science — that light whose 
brightness is filling the world — helps us here. 
It is the fortunate worth of all truth that it not 
only is seK-illumined, but throws side-lights 
into regions which may have been obscure 



TEE NEW ENGLAND CONSCIENCE. 229 

before. It may be said that no truth comes 
to the world without in some little strengthen- 
ing all the other truths that are in it. The 
doctrine of Atavism goes far in dealing with 
New England conscientiousness. Conditions of 
mind are inherited as are those of the body. A 
person will derive from progenitors not merely 
an aquiline or snub nose, but tastes and habits 
of thought. The men of selected conscience 
of the Puritan time peopled America, and were 
our progenitors. They had that subjection to 
Calvinistic severities of belief which we inevitabl}'' 
inherit. Their conscience went far away from 
the instincts of simple or liberal living, to find 
doctrines of repression and denial. They made 
forays into human nature, to find in innocent 
pleasures objects of subjection and control. 
Deacon watched deacon, and every eye was a 
policeman. The contagion, too, of sympathy 
would carry to unexampled heights the sur- 
render of every thing to the supposed mandate 
of Heaven. Of course such an existence, how- 
ever lofty its springs of action, was too inhuman 
to last for ever, or for long. Prosperity has 
brought, with the advancing years, mitigation 
and solace. Forms of luxury and self-indul- 
gence displace the austere severities of our 



230 A SHEAF OF PAPERS. 

fathers ; but under all still lives the New Eng- 
land conscience. 

Stimulus here, from some cause, is the driv- 
ing wheel of modern society. What we do, we 
do in excess ; fortunes dilate from small begin- 
nings to fabulous fulness; there is a whirl of 
social gayety, there are excesses of crime, and the 
meaner activities of rapine and speculation, but 
this same stimulus is found in the forum of con- 
science, and even exhibiting itself, to all these 
extremes, in the old-fashioned New England 
way. 

Is there any explanation of this ? A hint is 
given by science, in its analysis of light, the 
great stimulus of the universe. Not very long 
ago, the divided ray of Newton was found 
to have at its side invisible rays, only discov- 
erable by their effects. These are still little 
known ; but the study of them is daily showing 
facts of importance. The " actinic ray " is 
much talked of for its activity and power. It 
stimulates vegetable life, and is the ray of a 
photograph. Where the sun is veiled, as in 
England, the activity of any sun-force must be 
diminished ; there, life, as will be expected, is 
more equal and sweet ; there, the enthusiasms 
of fanaticism and of thought have feeble hold 



THE NEW ENGLAND CONSCIENCE, 231 

on men ; and conservatism, that reservoir of old 
convictions and habits, is supreme. We think 
that among these invisible solar rays, falling 
direct through an air which is so thin that the 
farthest object is as visible as are near ones in 
Europe, may be found that spur to New Eng- 
land activity and the New England conscience, 
^he terrible vacillations of the thermometer, 
the change in an hour from one extreme to 
another of its tube, — the dryness, as well as 
thinness of the air, — shut the pores, and all 
contribute to this stimulus. . Lean, anxious, and 
hungry for novelty, the New Englander loses 
the love of repose, and the cushions of fat upon 
which repose pillows itself. The adipose parts 
of the mind, too, disappear. The nerve is 
naked. The relation of man with Nature, which 
he gets somewhat as a Medusa feels the pulse 
and breathing of the sea, is interrupted by the 
dryness of his skin. He is imprisoned in it. 
That beautiful waft of tenderness and beauty 
almost audible in Nature is thus rendered un- 
felt. His organs, so shut in, are difficult to 
manage ; and, most of all, the mind, with its 
celestial brother, the soul, broods and agonizes 
itself for want of diffusive expansion. No 
wonder that conscience becomes keen and mor- 



232 A SHEAF OF PAPERS. 

bid, when, in addition to the stimulus of self- 
consciousness and conscience, thought is pris- 
oned in an organism thus driving it to feed 
upon itself and double the anxiety for well- 
doing. 

Man does not live alone. He shares, whether 
he will or no, the thought and affections of his 
fellows. The contagion of nervous diseases has 
been studied and acknowledged. So, in addi- 
tion to all this, no relief comes from the pres- 
ence of more genial and indifferent natures, — 
of men like Agassiz, who, while they carry a 
weight of thought with the mightiest, diffuse a 
sunshine much needed. For this reason, travel 
is useful to the American. The little wrinkle 
of care, self-created, ever deepening into the 
rut of undesired and imperious habit, is 
smoothed and ironed away by foreign climes. 
We get more good to the mind than to the 
body from Europe. What with the impetuous 
spirit of activity, which will not slow itself even 
in the presence of European indolence, the 
exhausting toil of the traveller, travelling his 
few months till his leisure voyage becomes the 
hardest of work, often his bodily health is little 
benefited ; but his mind cannot fail to be. The 
actinic ray does not follow him ; fresh tastes, 



TEE NEW ENGLAND CONSCIENCE, 238 

new channels of thinking, allow the worn and 
weary mechanism to repose. 

Perhaps we should all go mad if Europe were 
not kept for us a gymnasium and a play-ground. 
There are hundreds, nay, thousands, of men 
now in America, whose means permit it, driv- 
ing into conditions of dyspeptic, bitter, semi- 
lunacy, who there would be rebaptized into 
freshness and vigor. 

To some, the future of America for the New 
Englander looks anxious. This stimulus, first 
of the body, then of the brain, and finally 
kindling conscience and self-hood, is transfer- 
ring and exhaling much that we once possessed. 
The people of New England are growing 
passionless. Anger beyond a little flutter of 
peevishness is rarely seen. The towering 
wrath of John Bull exploding in the healthiest 
of invectives is but a faint murmur here among 
his descendants. Wrong is put upon us, and 
we submit. The destruction of the Paddock 
elms, the removal of the house of John Han- 
cock, any thing and every thing of civic mis- 
take is acquiesced in after a little whining. To 
be sure, banded masses of men accomplish 
finally an overthrow of evil, the dispersion of 
rings and conspiracies, as in the case of Tweed 



234 A SHEAF OF PAPERS. 

and his satellites at New York. Foreigners, 
seeing this submission to imposition, suppose it 
comes from indifference, — a conscience hardened 
to right and wrong. Never was there a greater 
mistake. The conscience of men here, who 
submit to wrong, and even sometimes inflict it, 
may still be the legitimate New England con- 
science ; but their weary brain cannot leave its 
ruts for fresh paths. They submit, but feel it. 
This draft of all human forces to action and 
thought is unpeopling our nurseries ; as the 
incredible temperance tyranny chains a public 
indifferent to the high delights of the table, 
where friendship's eye sparkles with the friendly 
shine of the sherry, and so in other regions our 
stimulus is revenging itself upon animalism. 

There is a recognized evil in democracy, — the 
want of that fixedness which the human spirit 
craves. Men scramble and push, and the rogue 
of yesterday is the Croesus of to-day. Flux and 
movement are everywhere. Professions, resi- 
dences, beliefs are changeable and changed, and 
every one is at a loss to recognize his accepted 
value. No manorial halls, no squires — the 
squires of generations — for us. We live ''au 
jour le jour;" a kind of newspaper possibility 
envelopes the most dignified and hidden life. 



THE NEW ENGLAND CONSCIENCE. 235 

No one would be surprised to hear that General 
Grant was attending lessons in draiving, or that 
General Butler had published a volume of 
poems. In this uncertainty, so cruelly dis- 
figuring a prosperity otherwise universal, con- 
science plays a mighty part. All that it finds in 
a man, in addition to what we have said above, 
of modesty, self-distrust, humility, it plays upon 
to secretly diminish him in his own eyes. Not 
quite certain that any of his pretensions are 
more than superficial, he naturally dreads any 
hint from an accusing eye, that they are perhaps 
even less than this. Like sheep huddling to- 
gether, when a vague trouble is in the air, their 
faces meaninglessly the same way, people find in 
gregariousness, safety. The solitude of a free, 
independent life is too oppressive for them. 
Oddity, eccentricity, are the least harmful 
names which the other sheep of the fold give to 
any isolation or withdrawal from the common 
movement. There is a secret impatience of any 
freedom they do not understand, any indepen- 
dence which reproaches their own compliant 
imitativeness. And just as a chain is no 
stronger than its weakest part, so, in this linked 
fellowship of public opinion, the value is apt to 
be determined by the poorest, least noble link of 



236 A SHEAF OF PAPERS. 

the human chain. It is in the terrible weakness 
of fools that Mrs. Grundy finds her strength. 
That excellent old lady, whose profile seems 
hidden behind that of the capped damsel upon 
our coin, discreetly limiting the pretensions of 
liberty, is as universal as human timidity and 
fear. The cruel eye, which, in a deacon's head, 
looked for impossible perfection in the doings of 
his brother deacon, which flamed with abomina- 
ble virulence in the sad tale of witchcraft, miti- 
gated, softened, indeed, still looks, as nowhere 
else, criticism and censure in New England. It 
almost makes one distrust the solidity of the 
goodness of many, when we come to know 
what excellent imitations of it are born under 
its cold glitter. People are made to do either 
what they disapprove or do not care to, by the 
pressure of public opinion. Benevolence is 
robbed of its charm when it is enforced. Even 
the pleasures of life lose their freshness if "you 
must " is attached to them as a condition. 

This uniformity in little things, not enforced 
by law, but a part of the very life, is produc- 
ing, what all foreigners observe, a sameness of 
doing, acting, moving, and keeping still, which 
is converting the nation of men and women into 
something like a paper of pins. All free flights 



THE NEW' ENGLAND CONSCIENCE, 237 

of Anglo-Saxon originality, all goodly growths 
of picturesque! personality, are discouraged. 
" They must k]|iow where to have him," is said 
of a man; and! then, when they have him, they 
want to use himj; his wealth, his talent, his time, 
must all contribute to their greed of possession. 
Not that they will thank him for all these gifts ; 
but thereby he may escape the censure which 
independence and free choice might subject 
him to. 

In the days of Tiberius, there was an eye at 
Rome which Ipoked discouragement and death 
into any citizen's life and home. Here there is 
an imponderable energy, whose pressure the 
American feels the moment he puts foot upon 
the shore ; which takes possession of him, utilizes 
and judges him in a way that makes every secret 
protest unavailing. This slavery, this loss of 
something which he has elsewhere, is perhaps 
the compensation for the admirable political 
liberty his fathers have won. 

It is not to be denied that Unitarianism has 
had a great deal to do in late days in shaping 
and directing the action of the New England 
conscience. The old exasperation of opinion 
which would seek its revenge for an impossible 
holiness in reaction, such as the familiar deprav- 



238 A SHEAF OF PAPMRS, 

ity of the sons of clergymen, was5 but the swing 
of the human pendulum. Wh^en good works 
were stigmatized as " filthy rag^s," no wonder 
that conscience burned away in ilames of profit- 
less ecstasy, or smouldered into the embers of 
self-condemnation. Unitarianis^m balanced and 
sobered all this, and has given al direction to the 
Christian kindness of men, whi^h is seen in the 
noble endowment of a hundred) institutions and 
ready supply to the demand of stiffering learning 
and taste. The Agassiz Museum and the Boston 
Art Museum are beautiful flowers to have grown, 
as they do, from the conscience, so sadly un- 
productive of such things, which once made New 
England what it was. Thus it is not merely 
that Unitarianism served, through its advocacy 
of reason, as a balance-weight to the spiritual 
tyranny of Calvinism, but it sweetened the acer- 
bity of that conscience till it could contemplate 
Deity no longer as the inexorable Judge, but as 
a father and supreme Artist, who must compla- 
cently contemplate the efforts of hie children to 
adorn life — this life, not the other — with what 
must for ever conduce to man's instruction and 
growth. 

For we claim that Unitarianism is but the re- 
verse side of Puritanism. It is the recovery of 



TEE NEW ENGLAND CONSCIENCE. 239 

the race through reasonableness, of its success 
of ardor and waste, from the lost regions of 
hopeless speculation. It is doubly reasonable 
that it was forced to dismiss so much that it 
loved, when the unreasonableness of it became 
apparent. Not only did it sweeten the religious 
feeling itself, but its action was equally benefi- 
cent, through the contagion and influence it 
exercised on other religious opinions. Their 
antagonism was shorn of its force when the 
good sense of Unitarianism became the prosper- 
ity of the many and the controlling force of the 
nation. We dare not say how much good in 
this manner it has done. The twin glory of our 
faith with its reasonableness, its liberality, took 
the torch and the whip from the hand of fanati- 
cism, and laid them away for ever. 

And now, when the distempered dream of 
Calvin has melted like some vapor of the night, 
Unitarianism finds itself fronting, with serene 
and smiling assurance, all that learning and 
science can teach the world of its Maker. When 
Channing first shot the lightning of his indigna- 
tion into the cruelty of slavery, Sumner's soul 
received the electric shock, and he went on to 
conquer where his master could but indicate the 
way. When Webster had announced the Chris- 



240 A SHEAF OF PAPERS. 

tian element in international law, we find the 
seeds of his opinion flowering into the arbitra- 
tion of Geneva. 

The banner which had inscribed on it the 
grandeur and trustworthiness of reason, as God's 
supreme intellectual gift to man, has been an 
encouragement in many a secret chamber of the 
student, in many a battle of science with error ; 
and, where others falter, it now flames in the 
front, marshalling the hosts of earth to the new 
understanding of the Maker, which all the sub- 
tleties of Rome, Scotland, and Geneva could 
never accomplish. 

" A little leaven leaveneth the whole lump." 
Wherever New England has planted its foot in 
other States, the standard of right has been 
lifted, — not merely that the shrewdness and in- 
dustry of the New Englander would find their 
way to the places of profit and honor, but the 
sentiment of public duty, of charity, of benevo- 
lence, were round him as an atmosphere. It has 
been said that New England is the brain of the 
nation. It may also be claimed that it is its 
conscience ; its stamp is everywhere, through 
the East and the West ; and the South is await- 
ing it, when the year of recovery from the dull 
lassitude of inactive defeat shall have begun. 



THE NEW ENGLAND CONSCIENCE. 241 

Then she will not return to the errors buried in 
the tomb of Calhoun ; to the ranting Methodism 
whose crude food has sufficed for her coarser 
appetite, nor to the imported and fashionable 
ritual of a service whose root is not in America, 
but aristocratic England, but will share with her 
conquerors the supremacy of a religion that finds 
its best expression in human growth towards 
right, culture, and good sense. 

We feel assured that the mighty growths of 
truth which now lie hidden, or emerging, in 
many of the new phenomena of the world's his- 
tory, will owe much to the preparation made for 
them by the New England conscience, and its 
off-set. New England reasonableness. When 
the unity and simplicity of truth shall be ac- 
knowledged, all its rays converging to a centre, 
when no discord reigns, when the many broken, 
misapprehended beliefs shall have been bound 
into one sheaf, one faith, one hope, men will 
always with gratitude remember how much they 
have owed to the mighty force of the Puritan 
conscience, which dared accept all the light- 
nings of heaven, if such were its divine will, 
and its younger and gentler sister, who, with a 
courage as great and far more useful, proclaimed 
the God we now believe in. 
U p 



242 A SHEAF OF PAPERS. 



ON TEMPERAMENT IN PAINTING. 

"PVERY picture which is really good, which 
we own and love, stands by us with un- 
failing affection on its own part. Not only 
Nature never betrayed the heart which loved 
her, but her successful shadow on the canvas 
has as little of treachery as the great original. 

But it must be really good ; then it will grow 
into the possessor's life, grow old with him ; and 
as he prepares to go where the great Artist may 
furnish other works and other artists for his 
delight, then his life-long friend will still ten- 
derly look at him, and mutely from its frame 
wave farewell. It does not leave him even 
then. It makes a part of his mind, of his mem- 
ory. It is woven into the very texture of his 
soul ; and if any thing of earth may hope to live 
hereafter, it is such an affectionate intertwining 
of God's world and man's reverential re-fashion- 
ing of it as this. 

The fact of this deep love of pictures in culti- 



ON TEMPERAMENT IN PAINTING. 243 

vated man suggests strange possibilities as to 
his pursuits hereafter. Once, good people did 
give music a great place in the occupations of 
heaven; but they did not mean opera music. 
They referred to the unimaginative level of 
psalm-singing, and kept down the hopes of wide 
development to the range of a deacon's ability. 

But the plastic arts were then forgotten, and 
no place found for them. 

When one considers how much they stand for 
in life ; for how much with cultivated nations 
they have always stood ; how the secret interest 
they inspire seems to find its instinct in the 
child's unequal following in a father's footsteps, 
the highest hopes may be indulged in as to the 
part they may play in the life to come. 

From the time the little boy compounds his 
mud pies, and then mounts to the archaic rude- 
ness of a snow image, some fashioning of things 
near him in this world is never far away from 
the man's regard. , 

He may be entangled in business — a mistress 
too jealous to allow hours of escape — when he 
might become an artist ; but from time to time 
he will hurriedly do some trifle of artistic work, 
and with a sigh return to his taskmaster; or, 
if prosperous, will comfort himself with an array 



244 A SHEAF OF PAPERS. 

of the works of others, and live over his lost 
possibilities in their success. 

When we think what a solace to the world of 
women this realm of art furnishes, as well as to 
the men, we learn to value it even more than 
before. In many a stately hall, in many a cot- 
tage in England, is an amateur silently working 
in water-colors, and feeding his or her spirit by 
contact with the spirit of Nature. What matter 
that it is only amateur work. In one sense that 
is the truest work, for it is not vulgarized by 
the need of money, and the dictates of foolish 
fashion and bad taste. It has not the exaltation 
of a fostered vanity. It is not making for itself 
a channel which it cannot leave. It is free, and 
not much invited to that self-listening which we 
call mannerism. If the flame is unfed by neces- 
sity and wide recognition, it is mostly a sterile 
talent ; its results are not exultingly hung in 
kings' chambers or noised abroad of men. It is 
modest and mute, and its little blossoms speedily 
hide away in dusty portfolios, or are swept off 
by fate to make room for the coming of others. 
But the amateur stands for much, and yet how 
few are the instruments he can play upon. 
Poetry, painting, sculpture, music, — these four 
Muses, the heavenly friends of man on earth, — 



I 



ON TEMPERAMENT IN FAINTING. 245 

these four are all man has for his delectation. 
And of these four Muses, painting and sculpture 
are the silent ones. Music owes her life to the 
sound over which she is queen ; poetry, though 
silent when creative, gains bj^ the music of the 
human voice, and mounts to her full glory when 
thrilling ennobled and sympathetic multitudes 
from the lips of the actor of genius. 

But painting, though mute, talks in her way, 
and about many things. She can tell us stories 
almost as well as the poet can ; can " babble of 
green fields," and the beauty and splendor of 
earth : can, with Shakespeare, 

" On the unsteady footing of a spear," 

venture to cross abysses, and bring back to us 
something she may have found in dream-land 
and the land of phantasy ; but mostly does she still 
mutely talk of the graces and glory of the land she 
loves best, — the land of reality. That is enough 
for her. With her eyes she can find romance 
behind the rudest commonplace ; a tragedy tliere, 
where others see but vulgarity. She loves the 
sunshine, and can sing with it like a bird ; but 
she does not disdain the shadow. That she can 
make the home of feeling, and carry from gloom 
images to soften and make grave the soul. 



24^ 



A SHEAF OF PAPERS. 



And so this friendly art is naturalized in every 
country and by every fireside. 

From the walls in a thousand homes she looks 
down on the inmate, and converses with him. 
She tells him of her Norman meadow and its 
browsing kine, till he can walk among them, 
and breathes the freshness of the coming shower; 
she can find for him a passport to cross the ocean, 
and for ever fix the rolling billow by his break- 
fast table ; she can show him in far-away lands 
the cathedral, the temple, the mosque. With- 
out the help of the roses she can fetch for his 
senses, from some bazaar of the Orient, an ottar 
which shall never lose its scent. His fancy, 
through her help, can mount on its heavenward 
flight with Angelico, or suffer with saturnine 
Spagnatello upon the burning bars of the mar- 
tyr. She has the carpet of the Arabian magi- 
cian, and can waft her lover " beyond the night, 
beyond the day," to earth's utmost boundary. 
She looks down on the inmate and converses 
with him. Yes ! the picture from the walls 
breathes of the scene or the group it represents. 
But it says to him more than that, — something 
of the temperament of the artist who wrought 
the work. Music can speak of the temperament 
of the composer ; poetry can tell us of the poet's 



ON TEMPERAMENT IN PAINTING. ^47 

mood, of his nature, whether serene or gloomy, 
whether cheerful or saturnine ; to the sculptor, 
perhaps, more than to any other artist, the cold 
severity of the marble refuses the interpene- 
tration of his nature, of his character and tem- 
perament; but to none of these do we come 
so near the man himself as we do- with the 
painter. 

He wreaks himself on canvas ; and his tem- 
perament, his mood, is somewhat there absorbed 
into his labor. 

So, besides the pleasure gained from the ex- 
cellence of the picture, do we have in addition 
the man looking out from his work. We share 
his company, and the room is filled with his 
presence. Certainly it is only in masterpieces 
that such an influence is felt as overwhelming. 
The grander, the more original, the man, the 
more of these will be in his work. Of the com- 
mon sort of men, — the men whose whole nature 
amounts to but little, and that little is at their 
fingers'-ends, — the effect of personal presence is 
of course small. As was said in answer to one 
who complained that his character by a phrenolo- 
gist would do for anybody, " And is that not a 
pretty good account of you?" we may say of 
these, that little can be expressed where little is 



248 



A SHEAF OF PAPERS. 



possessed. But even then we get something, 
the nationality at least. 

A man taking up his brush does not think of 
trying to show he is German or Italian or Span- 
ish, but the picture reveals at a glance the open 
secret. With all our freedom of the will, we 
cannot make ourselves other than we are. Our 
nationality is a part of us. The first few words 
we speak, our attitude, our gesture, proclaim, 
without a passport, the land we come from. 
And nations have their temperament, as we all 
feel, though the difference is not easily always 
expressed in words. That harmony, which is 
the art-method of Nature, makes the skies, the 
soil, the wines, the instincts of a nation, per- 
meate each individual, and "prattle of his 
whereabout," with no intention from him. 

Why is it that all German pictures are alike ? 
Only in the greatest men can human nature soar 
above national limitations, and make them cit- 
izens of the world. And not wholly then. 
Dante and Shakespeare, Goethe and Cervantes, 
all have the stamp of their national tempera- 
ment. What is it in the German pictures which, 
with all their cleverness, all their good drawing 
and clear intention, makes them remote and un- 
interesting to us? And are they nearer and 



ON TEMPERAMENT IN PAINTING. 249 

dearer to the Germans themselves ? Possibly 
so ; but how much they love them we camiot 
easily know. We do not hear of passionate de- 
light in them at home, nor of wasteful extrava- 
gance to become their possessor. We think of 
them as monumental and pseudo-classic, when 
historical or figure-pictures ; as appealing to an 
epic or theatrical sensibility ; as fit for the ceil- 
ings of palaces and academies, but not made for 
the fireside or home use. 

And their landscapes, often the most noble 
and superior combinations of mountains, lakes, 
and forest, to us want the " je ne sais quoi," — 
the friendly, affectionate nearness to the modest 
loveliness of good scenery, — to forbid our look- 
ing at them without coldness. They seem painted 
by one man, — the same conventional glacier and 
pine, the same expanse of placid water and toy- 
hke figures, who seem to have no real business 
or interest to be there. 

To this the exception which gives authority to 
a rule is not wanting. Achenbach, German as he 
is, has won a welcome into many a foreign gallery ; 
and Baron Leys, if we must call him German, has 
connected us skilfuUj^, by his roccoeo falsetto of 
manner, with the grand old Germans of the 
earlier period, — with Holbein and Durer. 
H* 



250 A SHEAF OF PAPERS. 

The Italian temperament, so favorable to paint- 
ing, has almost taken the first place in Art's Tem- 
ple, by the adoring consent of all ; thus supreme, 
however, only when Italy breathed herself the 
full Italian life, — when a beating heart was in- 
dividualized in each city, and when the hand of 
the church stretched itself through every clime. 
Though the temperaments of Michel Angelo 
and Raffaelle were the reverse of each other, 
we feel both to be Italian. How fortunate that 
those two great men were not moulded alike, 
and thus in danger of one being absorbed in the 
other! Their limitations of temperament kept 
them severely apart ; and though Raffaelle for a 
little played with the mighty ideal of the other, 
he soon inevitably returned into himself. No 
hinderance was there, no perplexity or obstacle 
to be avoided, but his whole divine nature flowed 
into his pencil, ever on and upward, but in the 
path marked for him by his nature, and, alas! 
for none but his. He could not waste time. 
He was art incarnated, and blossomed in Ma- 
donnas and San Sistos as easily as a rose-bush in 
roses. 

Nor was the craggy nature of the great Michel 
an obstacle to him. It was himself, and the 
Titan tossed to the ceiling of the Vatican those 



ON TEMPERAMENT IN PAINTING. ^51 

austere and awful creatures as easily as a child 
blows bubbles. And yet not without the throes 
and lift of his mighty nature, but that power of 
effort was a part of himself, and not to be 
attained by lesser men. In one sense he was 
not Italian. Nowhere but in him do we find 
moral grandeur, as expressed in human form, to 
any thing like the same degree. He alone could 
scale the skies. The few who toiled upward 
after him soon recoiled before the sapphire 
blaze of a height which was not for them, and 
soon the old gentilezze returned, and the artist 
and his admirers were content to lie crowned 
with libations and roses at the foot of the hill 
of difficulty they could not ascend. 

France of late years has taken a place in the 
world's regard as a home of art whicb has wo- 
fully fallen from her in other fields. 

She righted herself in the most unexpected 
and complete manner. Her sensibility to theat- 
ric grandeur caught her entangled in the pages 
of Plutarch ; and the cross between the grand 
old classic and the turbulence of revolutionary 
patriotism gave birth to a hybrid school, which, 
as it was not founded on nature, could not last 
for long. The figures of David and Gerard are 
but painted statues, but they agonize with the 



252 A SHEAF OF PAPERS. 

frenzy of the democratic tripod. When men went 
to Plutarch for inspiration, of course they had 
httle eye for the nature about them. Land- 
scape-painting was at its lowest. The tea-tray 
style was the one which then was the most fash- 
ionable. 

De Marne, with his smoothness, and otherj^ 
smoother than he, showed an exile from real, 
living, breathing nature. 

Oddly enough, England furnished them a bet- 
ter example, which she did not follow herself. 
By chance, a noble picture of Constable came to 
Paris, and was bought by a connoisseur, who 
had a hall full of De Marnes and his brethren. 
The old gentleman was accustomed to show it 
after the others, when, drawing suddenly a cur- 
tain from before the Constable, he would say, 
" And now look out of the window." Nature, 
through Constable, corrected the misdirection of 
French talent, and brought it back to herself. 
It was time for reaction, and inevitable. Nature 
could not longer endure to have her lovers comb 
and polish her as they then did. Moreover, a 
clever American, who has never had the recog- 
nition from the world for the gift (for it was in 
every sense a gift) he made her, came to her 
assistance. A painter of our own did more for 



ON TEMPERAMENT IN PAINTING. 253 

Art than centuries had accomplished in Europe, 
when he dowered her with the compressible^ 
tube of lead for color. If the generous art- 
world had been properly appealed to, it would 
have laid a fortune at the feet of its benefactor. 
Something has been done : a gift for a gift has 
been made by New York ; but the world should 
have shared in it. 

And was not America playing its natural part 
in this matter ? Not by race able to match the 
highest efforts of her European rivals ; not ready 
for early success in painting, her brain, if not 
her temperament, was in its normal function 
in contriving so simple but so indispensable a 
help to artists. 

With this tube, Nature could be approached 
as never before. The wretched contrivance of 
skin, so soon drying or bursting, was awkward 
and poor. And herewith came a love of Nature, 
won through familiarity, unknown before. Her 
secrets were rifled, her charms made known, her 
method understood, and to all this, France, fol- 
lowing Constable, had the great honor of leading 
the way. 

No wonder that one of the most gifted men 
of the new period, Troyon, should have felt it 
his duty to go, when in England, miles out of 



254 A SHEAF OF PAPERS. 

his way to pay his homage to the widow of Con- 
stable. 

America returns with gratitude her debt to 
France. Her sons study in their schools and 
import their good manner, — good, because the 
tru6 manner. While England has been losing 
herself in pre-Raffaellite details ; while Ger- 
many has been extending the wooden art of 
Nuremberg into all her schools, France has 
doubly added to man's delight by the simple 
eclectic unity and happy ordonnance of her 
pictures, and perhaps still more through their 
truth freshening for the observer the grace and 
beauty of Nature herself; for to love a good 
French landscape is to learn to see farther into 
the charm and method of Nature. 

How pleasant to feel this French superiority, 
when so much has been taken from her, — 
how pleasant to put Troyon and Corot against 
Sedan, and to remember that if, through the 
ordered enginery of war, Germany may for a 
time have put her foot upon the neck of France,, 
she can only vindicate to the world the place 
she has usurped, by herself supplying the place 
of France, — by making good to us the art, the 
literature, the civility, the silks, the wines of 
the rival she struck at. 



ON TEMPERAMENT IN PAINTING. 255 

Till she does so, she cannot wonder that the 
world, so heavily and for so long the debtor of 
France, will find but cold comfort in counting 
German bayonets as a substitute for what it 
misses. 

When we think of the grand old masters, — 
how in solitude each form comes to us clothfed 
in the personality of its temperament ! 

We do not think of any one work of the 
master, but of himself, as imagination and sym-' 
pathy picture him, — the abiding spirit behind 
every picture, the soul that so expressed -itself, 
and which we seem to know so well. 

Raffaelle, — how he glides across our mem- 
ory as he does in his own fresco of the " School of 
Athens," an angel among men, with those gentle 
features, and those spiritual eyes, so wide apart, 
so far-seeing, and so all-seeing I 

" His soul was like a star and dwelt apart." 

What flesh, we wonder, could fitly clothe such 
peerless ability ? We only feel that he was gentle- 
ness itself, and that his body must have been the 
plastic servant of his genius — no hinderance, 
and no sharer with passionate fellowship in the 
regal calm of that divine nature. It is as if soul 
and body were so in harmony that the ideal 



256 A SHEAF OF PAPERS. 

forms — tlie ideas of God, which Plato saw and 
believed in — opened to Raffaelle their heaven, 
and mirrored themselves in him as the stars do 
in the tranquillity of a windless lake. 

And Michel Angelo, how unlike, — he, ever 
struggling with the superincumbent load of flesh 
and matter ; not, disengaged from earth, could 
his soul find the tranquil ideal which dwelt in 
him, but soul and body were in rivalry of 
strength and grandeur, — the body sublime, as if 
it were lord over the intellect, and yet crowned 
with the sad and lonely dignity of fallen man. 

No gentleness, no sweetness there, but the 
struggle to ascend ; the convulsion and shock of 
conscience with the degradation it would not 
share in ; the proclamation to man of the seren- 
ity and peace beyond, from the craggy and tem- 
pest-tost height to which only while on earth 
could his spirit reach. One, the gospel of love 
and gentleness ; the other, the harder gospel of 
duty and suffering, — the complement the one of 
the other, and each indispensable to man. 

Titian was something apart from either of 
these. No prediction in him of a heaven won 
by either love or struggle, but the serene con- 
tentedness of earth. He also was needed for us, 
to reconcile man to his dwelling-place and his 



ON TEMPERAMENT IN PAINTING. 257 

mere humanity. What peace, too, is here ! not 
the peace of the inner nature, a prediction or a 
protest of man's limitations ; but the sovereign, 
princely calm of a thoroughly human and healthy 
nature. Nearer to us in our e very-day moods 
than any, his pictures breathe health and joy. 
There is in them not the sickly sunshine of the 
ascetic, but a sunshine as of wine to cheer and 
strengthen the drooping heart of man. His 
figures stand as if no garment of the skies were 
needed for them ; sufficient for them the beau- 
tiful folds and tissues of earth. The earth is 
good enough for them, and they make earth 
better by being there. Titian is the sweetener 
of life ; without him something of cheer would 
be wanting in the sunshine, — something of man's 
royalty misapprehended by himself. 

And Fra Beato Angelico, — the divine brother, 
as he truly is. If Catholicism had no one to 
plead for her but he, how our hearts would all 
yearn to be on his side ! His pictures are the 
best excuse and justification of the cloister. For 
a moment we regret the street and its confu- 
sions, to long for a share in a cell where earth 
should fall from us and such a heaven as his 
come down. He is the one most saintly painter : 
others are saintly, but he was a citizen of the 



258 A SHEAF OF PAPERS. 

heavenly city, and saw what he drew. And he 
had health too, the health of the believing, as- 
piring spirit, with balanced wing circling amid 
the angelic host, and looking down in pitying 
remoteness upon the body it had left. 

Not so many a sad Catholic painter, — from 
the convulsed and agonizing Ribera to the 
sickly, sentimental piety of Carlo Dolce. Some- 
thing of true religious feeling there is in Carlo 
Dolce, but tainted with morbid conditions. His 
very portrait says so, — yearning, sickly, sweet 
and sad, wanting manhood and power, — one 
who could do little for his fellow-creatures, but 
win from them the name of sweetness. Then 
Tintoretto. Look into those mournful and 
cavernous eyes of his, and see there the gloom 
dashed with lightning, — the grandeur and the 
sorrow of his lighting soul. How the story of 
his silent grief by his dead daughter's bedside, of 
her who had shared his genius and his love till 
comfort, if at all, could only come to him through 
his j)encil, then painting her dear, dead face, — 
touches and satisfies us. We can understand 
by it better the stormy grandeur of the man, 
— human also, a Michel Angelo of Venice, — 
lapped in its golden sunshine, and wearing silk 
and fur and velvet, but with his great soul like 



ON TEMPERAMENT IN PAINTING. 259 

a sea over which the thunders mutter, and the 
black surges toss and rage. 

And Salvator Rosa, — his also a stormy soul, 
but with no lofty outlook into the upper sky ; 
a nature volcanic and wild like his native land, 

— picturesque seems a word made for him, 

— never nature, with its shadow and its sun- 
shine, simply true, but every thing set off by 
a glare of its own, as of a landscape seen by 
lightning. His figures are the fellows of the 
wild chasms and mountain peaks they bestride : 
they both own a savage harmony. He, too, 
cannot be spared. We leave to others the ex- 
act and careful rendering of Nature, and are 
as content with his banditti fierceness as used 
Allston to be with the mysteries of Udolpho. 
He is the highest, the most genuine expression 
of the terrible, spasmodic beauty of the volcanic 
neighborhood of Naples ; the king of the pica- 
resque and the picturesque, and therefore, with 
no heed to Mr. Ruskin's protest, the world still 
proposes to keep for him a niche, though no lofty 
one, in their great Temple of Art. 

And so in majestic procession the great of old 
pass by, each one looking down into us as he 
goes, and leaving behind unforgotten, unfading, 
the stamp of his personality, the flavor of his 



260 A SHEAF OF PAPEBS. 

genius, the character of his temperament. They 
went out of themselves ; other men fence them- 
selves in, and guard against the intrusion of dis- 
trusted eyes ; but these coin their hearts into 
their life, and squander them upon every lover 
they may win. They take us into their confi- 
dence and storm our indifference with the enthu- 
siasm which will not be denied ; and so the happy 
fate is theirs to speak of nature, and man, and 
themselves, from generation to generation, — the 
go-betweens of the centuries, — the familiars of 
the heart, the beloved of all. 



THE FUTURE OF AMERICA. 261 



THE FUTURE OF AMERICA. 

' I ^HE future of America is everywhere a sub- 
ject for intrepid speculation. The hopeful 
see there a millennial consummation, to which all 
the good forces of the best races contribute, with 
perfected laws, and a Christianity which, fusing 
all sects into a loving brotherhood, shall carry 
the nation forward beyond any poet's dream. 
And the unhopeful see in that future only con- 
fusion and the defeat of present prosperity, — 
a wreck of our institutions brought about by 
their abuses ; a train at high-pressure speed 
without a conductor, or a bad one, tearing 
away till, leaping the metals, it bury itself and 
its freight in ruin. 

If we only knew — these hopes and these 
fears are both most legitimate : but events are 
not sentimental, and they must find their true 
horoscope, not in our desires or our fears, but, if 
at all, by the consideration of all the active 
forces which may contribute to that future. 



262 A SHEAF OF PAPERS. 

What our institutions, what our climate, what 
our race do for us now, we can see somewhat ; 
but what force shall prove the controlling one, 
what check may hold or fail, what remedial pro- 
cess the youth of a growing nation may find for 
any hurt, we can only dimly guess. A few nat- 
ural thoughts upon the forces for good and ill 
now in action ; certain tendencies already dis- 
coverable ; certain moulds of life and thinking, 
notably American, — may indicate the right way 
of looking at the matter. 

When a seed is sown in a new soil, we watch 
to see the effect of the new earth and air on the 
plant. It sometimes languishes and sometimes 
even gains by the change of place. The seed 
of Europe, their men and women, their thoughts 
and their habits planted here, may languish, 
retain their old character, or gain by the ex- 
change of place ; or they may fail for a time, 
and then, adjusting themselves, develop into 
bloom and beauty ; or they may exhaust them- 
selves by precipitate development, and wither 
in the very sunshine which made their preco- 
cious Hfe. 

One of the first things to notice in America 
is the difference of its climate from the English 
climate. Where the air is fed by moisture, an 



THE FUTURE OF AMERICA. 263 

equable temperature is in the main sustained, 
and a shield of cloud is hung between earth and 
the burning sun. A lusty and active nation, 
shut in the small bounds of a little island, are by 
these tempering influences enabled to live with- 
out confusion or strife, and the best thought of 
the best men is steadil}- moderate and conserva- 
tive ; the hurts the Commonwealth gets from 
growth are healed without fever in that placid 
air, and sweet and quiet as its skies has the 
national life, in spite of obstacles, flowed on. Of 
course every nation has, as the French so admi- 
rably say, " the defects of its qualities." Ennui, 
indifference in matters of opinion, a certain 
torpor and dullness, are the defects of these 
qualities. We speak thus of England, for the 
English is the master-race here. In an Anglo- 
American head all that has made America what 
it is has been thought out. The other nations 
composing our Union contribute interesting na- 
tional qualities, and worthy of our study ; but 
they are not the shaping ones, — the forma- 
tive, building intelligence, without which (cer- 
tainly if Catholic influence controlled it) we 
should have been the rudderless rafts the re- 
publics of South America are. 

On coming to America the English there 



264 A SHEAF OF PAPERS. 

found a climate the reverse of their own. Dry- 
ness for moisture, stimulus for repose, variable- 
ness of weather far beyond their own, and 
something more, which is even yet only partially 
appreciated, — a quickening, driving, exhausting, 
electric impulse, whose influence it is very im- 
portant to understand. Ere this, scientific men 
have said that in climate-influence electric force 
has been ignorantly omitted. We have our ther- 
mometer to tell of heat and cold, and a barometer 
of dryness .and moisture, but no house holds its 
electrometer as yet. 

Coming from England in summer, America 
seems to swim in an electric haze, so bright that 
the eye can barely endure the high light on 
clouds, so thin that a house a mile off looks as 
if it could be taken up by the hand, so subtle 
that it can be felt in darkened rooms, and so 
traversed by winds that no atmospheric deposit 
can remain, and thus the thinness becomes 
glassier than ever. And in the winter, what 
electric brilliancy, what howling winds, what 
leaps of the thermometer ! 

Into this atmosphere the English came, and it 
would have been wonderful indeed if it had 
wholly left them as it found them. It began 
upon them the day of their arrival, and yester- 



THE FUTURE OF AMERICA. 265 

day saw an addition of influence to that of two 
centuries. Of course it is easy to exaggerate 
this influence of climate, but also let us distrust 
our conservative mood of indifference, — a part of 
our English constitution, — and count the effect 
of climate for less than it is. For it is to be 
remarked that though naturally the suggestion 
that America has many climates is true, still 
they all have something in common different 
from those of Europe. We learn from Mr. 
Tyndall that we all live at the bottom of forty 
miles of atmosphere, like eels and flounders 
below an atmospheric sea. The air we breathe 
is heavy with supply of nourishment and some- 
times with death, but the most certain death 
would be that of an exhausted receiver. At 
the top of Mount Blanc life cannot be long sus- 
tained; the blood bursts through the skin, the 
lungs are not fed. Our air has something of 
the thinness of the air of Mount Blanc, and 
through that thinness the sun, the source of 
life to all things, sends his ray fiercer upon the 
brain than he does in Europe. The best ex- 
pression I know to convey the difference be- 
tween our climate and that of the Old World 
is, that there is more draught here ; the blower 
is put on to our fire, and we burn away with the 
12 



266 A SHEAF OF PAPERS, 

top of our chimney, the brain, in lively flame. 
No wonder that too often this draught is got at 
the expense of the furnace ; the stomach feels 
its consuming power, and assumes abnormal 
conditions. One has often noticed the swift 
despatch and silent society of our taUes d'hote. 
The feed for the fire is thrown in with haste 
and without precaution, and without the social 
cheer and serenity which should naturally wel- 
come so pleasant a necessity as eating. For the 
waste is tremendous. 

So, often the machinery gets disorganized, 
and needs the repair of the doctor ; or the fort- 
unate patient is able to try Europe, where the 
draught and waste are less, and where, besides, 
the sufferer returns to the old home. Is it 
conceivable that the influence of those con- 
ditions which made for so long the parent 
should go for nothing with the children ? For 
long centuries of growth and training, the 
European has been brought to what he is, — 
the foremost of the many inhabitants of earth. 
Year by year the mysterious particles of being 
which transmit their gain, whether of brain or 
body, from father to son, had made our Puritan 
ancestor what he Avas, and to recover those con- 
ditions is invaluable to his descendant. Some- 



THE FUTURE OF AMERICA. 267 

thing separated his stock from all other inferior 
races, and that something the descendant of the 
Puritans recovers when revisiting home. For 
Europe is the home of his protoplasm, of the 
long succession of forces which make him what 
he is. And he feels it at once. Those premo- 
nitions of a previous state which Plato speaks 
of seem to give him a claim to Europe as his 
home. And it is the home of the greater part 
of him ; the nostalgia he had felt without under- 
standing it brings to his eyes tears of affection- 
ate recognition. The English lawn, the hanging 
wood, the castle's tower cresting its top, the 
village church, seem his ; and indeed he loves 
England with a love no Englishman can feel for 
it. He sees it as the Israelites may have seen 
again the towers of Jerusalem after their songs 
of heart-break in a foreign land. 

But amidst all his home-feeling he makes a 
discovery. He finds he has two homes, • — the 
one he has left, and the one he recovers. In 
each he misses something. In England soon 
there is an outcry within him for the keen air, 
the active life, the stimulus, beyond those of 
England, and when home again " reminiscitur 
Argos," as only one can a mother country. 

It is probable in the future that England and 



268 A SHEAF OF PAPERS. 

America will mingle much more than they have 
done already. Even now, our lecture rooms, 
our theatres, see England dividing with our 
own clever men public applause. Later, when 
we are well aired and ripe, English will be here 
as residents, while the graceful Thames and the 
misty Tweed will see villas whose temporary 
possessor has his home in New York and Bos- 
ton. And it will be good for both to do it. 
Our electric air takes the cobwebs out of the 
Englishman's brain, and England gives that 
repose to an American's machinery it sadly 
needs. 

Books have been written to prove that a Eu- 
ropean colony cannot thrive so far away from 
home as we are. Knox and others have so 
said. The alarm is natural. What was built up 
through so many years of selection and struggle 
may unbuild itself when the helps it had once 
are wanting. When Dickens was in Boston, 
I asked him what I called an important ques- 
tion. " You have the best pair of eyes in Eng- 
land, and were here some thirty years ago. Do 
you see gain or loss in the stability of our foot- 
hold ? Do our young people seem to you health- 
ier or sicklier since you came first? " Rubbing 
his hands with glee, he said: "T have much 



THE FUTURE OF AMEBIGA. 269 

pleasure in answering your question. They 
seem to me to have decidedly gained, — more 
robust and healthier." But all do not think so ; 
and the diminishing nursery, the frequent pallor 
and feebleness of so many, have given alarm to 
others than Dr. Clarke ; but I find, as I remem- 
ber the past, in proportion more stout and able- 
bodied people now than then. But memory 
cannot be safely trusted in such matters, as it 
mixes itself up too much with special cases and 
self-illusion. 

I have thus dwelt so fully on the climate, for I 
think it perhaps the preponderating element in 
the future, and it has influences most encourag- 
ing to a republican form of government. There 
is an electric sympathy as well as an electric stim- 
ulus in our sky. We think in masses ; thought 
flies through the air as on an invisible wire ; 
brain answers to brain ; and efforts can be made 
or resisted through a solidarity of will of which 
Europe has no conception. 

There is something here which makes per- 
sonal distinctions a farce. Little grandeur sur- 
rounds a title, nor would a barrister's wig curl 
with terror here to anybody. Our fathers did 
not found a republic, — they found one. It was 
in the air already, and easily all the rest was 



270 A SHEAF OF PAPEBS. 

done. They soon were clothed with republican 
methods in which they were more at home 
than they were in their former dress. To-day 
the republic here is more at home and more 
in accordance with popular opinion than in Eng- 
land is monarchy. 

Our danger is not from monarchy. Nor 
would it seem to be from priestcraft. The 
Irishman brings with him the culte of his priest, 
but after a while it sits loosely on him. He 
breathes, too, that something in the air of inde- 
pendence and good sense which makes the gold 
of family and title look so pale. He changes, 
too, hourly. 

Apparently he leaves on the wharf the rol- 
licking fun which had cheered his misery at 
home, and assumes with his new responsibiUty 
a gravity which never deserts him. It is hard 
to believe him the queer jester of the Lakes of 
Killarney, or the merry beggar of the streets 
of Dublin. His nostalgia is taking the form of 
missing his fun. But better fed and lodged 
than ever before, his brain is doubly undergoing 
a change for the better. The over-dampness 
of his own country is exchanged for brightness 
and stimulus, and that brain which had got 
torpid and sluggish for want of phosphorus 



TEE FUTURE OF AMERICA. ^Tl 

(for in Ireland the Irish will not eat fish ex- 
cept as a religious observance, and the potato 
has no phosphorus) is fortified by meat and 
fish unknown at home. The effect of this 
change of diet, in connection with schools and 
prosperity, is easily seen in the young gener- 
ation. They are as American as any of us. 
They begin to look at their priest as no ma- 
gician, and are on the way to which all the 
ways lead, — to become the American of the 
future. 

Our real danger is from the overgrowth 
of our own peculiarities, — a surrender to our 
faults ; the neglect of the public weal from the 
loss of honor attaching to its office ; a certain 
indifference from weariness of fighting with 
rampant and vulgar villany ; an arrangement by 
v/hich, for personal peace and quiet, the public 
trusts, the public treasury, may be given up 
to the wolves ; the submission to whatever 
roguery is impending as inevitable. Yes, the 
country can only go to ruin by default; but 
that danger would seem to be impossible, where 
public opinion is so watchful and sensitive. 
Every return of the wave of outraged public 
opinion is always more stormy, and let us hope 
will for ever sweep before it the impediments 



272 A SHEAF OF PAPERS. 

which bad men may interpose to the nation's 
deyelopment, and finally witness its authorized, 
legitimate ascent into the foremost place among 
the nations of the world. 



JASMIN. 273 



JASMIN. 

T TALF the world does not know how the 
other half lives, was truly said, — not the 
half of any country, city, or village even ; for 
selfish preoccupation, as well as the pride which 
hides the poverty of which it is ashamed, both 
conspire to make this true, even in a village, 
where for the most part every thing is known 
about everybody. 

This saying is particularly true of France ; for 
the glare of Paris but makes the darkness of the 
provinces more evident. This glare has a moth- 
like fascination for the Frenchman. As he 
quaintly says, when the fiddle gives him a long- 
ing to dance, " I feel the ants in my calves," 
so one might say the word " Paris " stirs the 
asphalt in his blood, and bids it hurry to join 
that of the Boulevards. A provincial celebrity 
is of small account in France till Paris has set 
its seal upon his fame. 

So, sooner or later all come to Paris, and Paris 
welcomes each illustrious visitor. It chanced 

12* K 



274 A SHEAF OF PAPERS. 

that I myself was there, when a provincial poet 
came for recognition and laurels. Jasmin, the 
barber of Agen, the favorite troubadour of the 
Pyrenees, it was. All the critics waved their 
hands in salutation. Jules Janin, alive in every 
nerve to literary novelty, and the judicial and 
friendly St. Beuve, led in the ovation. St. 
Beuve, whose word is oracular, had already, 
in the " Revae des Deux Mondes,*' signalled 
his merits, and related " faits et gestes," which 
proved that the poet's heart was as warm as his 
fancy was lively ; indeed had said how the heart 
inspired the head. Paris could not, of course, 
furnish such a coronation and tournament as 
suits the more limited arena and warmer sensi- 
bilities of a meridional town. 

Fringing the blue Mediterranean and the 
Pj^renees is a belt of cities and chateaux, round 
which still lingers the aroma of the days of song. 
" Bon chien chasse de race," and the blood of 
the old provincial ballads still sings in those 
Southern veins of theirs. As the snow lingers 
in some Pyrenean valley, when all is green in the 
plain, the murmur of mediaeval lays still haunts 
the air there. And as in the Alps, — where in 
a secluded valley still lingers the mediaeval re- 
ligious play which astonishes the spectator as 



JASMIN. 275 

with a past which has everywhere else melted 
into the light of common day, and yet delays 
there, a patch of the unsullied whiteness of the 
old religion, — so is it near the sister Pyrenees 
with song. 

Here and there the old feeling reasserts it- 
self. A good half-dozen of local poets could be 
named, each with enthusiastic adherents, who 
have cropped up as it were from the old forma- 
tion. They send challenges to each other ; they 
write cartels in quaint, sparkling fashion, as if 
we yet wore helm and hauberk, and fair ladies 

" Rain influence, 
And judge the prize." 

The most famous of these, after Jasmin, per- 
haps, is Reboul of Nismes, a baker, as Jasmin was 
a barber. One of the singing fellowship chal- 
lenged Jasmin, and St. Beuve justly commends 
the wise and witty way with which Jasmin 
extricates himself from the difficulty. He was 
challenged to be shut up, imprisoned with his 
rival for twenty-four hours, only necessary food 
being admitted, and three subjects given them 
for competitive skill. Jasmin, with a merry 
twinkle in his eye, protests that his Muse, 
who so loved the open air and the breath of 
Nature, could not endure it, would pine and 



276 A SHEAF OF PAPERS. 

fail ; besides, that she was a slow producer, and 
twenty-four hours would hardly give her time 
to begin. " To my shame," he says, '•! am al- 
ready vanquished, and you may proclaim it to 
all who care to hear it." So Jasmin in Paris 
was not to be baited with an adversary, but he 
did not decline charming, crowded, and illus- 
trious audiences. 

I had the good fortune to be present on one 
of these occasions. The room, not too large, 
was filled with ladies, not a few English, for 
our hostess belonged to both nations. The poet 
beamed like a sun. His features, mobile and 
glowing, made more frigid than before, the Eng- 
lish faces below him, as he recited. His was no 
perfunctory reading, — no timid, mock-modest 
elocution. No ; he beamed from his desk like 
the sun of Agen, and gloried in his warmth and 
splendor. He had conquered the coldest, before 
he began, by the magical sympathy of his man- 
ner. He was the song he sung ; he did not say 
it only with his lips. With a tangle of hair, 
dark with that brand of sunshine which, getting 
blacker and blacker as we near the equator, 
crisps and curls in Africa into those little curls 
of burning ribbon, flat and not cylindrical ; with 
an eye, a well of sunshine, and dancing with a 



JASMIN. 277 

light as if on a grape of his own Garonne ; with 
a voice rich and thick with glowing animal life, 
he took our little room in his hands and did with 
it what he would. He melted his audience in 
every sense. The poem was the " Blind Girl of 
Castel CuilMe," so beautifully translated by Mr. 
Longfellow. The pathos of it goes straight to 
the heart, and Jasmin well knew it. 

" If you would move your hearers, first feel 
yourself." Never was the saying better heeded. 
The simple, vital genuineness of the man upset 
all the rules of French recitation. 

" Ladies, get out your handkerchiefs, and if 
you have two, all the better, for I shall make you 
weep." A dangerous bravado, a dangerous van- 
ity, you say. Nothing of the sort ; this acknowl- 
edged and robust vanity of his he gloried in, and 
so did we. 

" I do not let it embarrass me," he said, " by 
concealment or denial. I know there is feeling 
in my poem, for I felt my heart ache as I wrote 
it." And so he beamed and began. And around 
and over all was a mighty flavor of garlic. 

The beautiful sunny Southern words — bastard 
brothers of the sweet Italian speech — seemed 
to float to us enriched upon an atmosphere of 
garlic. But there was enough French in solu- 



278 A SEEAF'OF PAPERS. 

tion for all to follow and understand the poet. 
Soon the defiant handkerchiefs, which had sul- 
lenly retreated to the deepest pockets, waved 
their white signals of surrender. His bravos 
were silence and sobs. With eyes streaming 
and broken voice, he slaughtered and despatched 
his auditory. It was something new, something 
human and genuine. We. felt ashamed of our- 
selves, and wondered whether, when human 
nature has such springs of feeling, suppression 
and starvation of them be on the whole best. 
For a moment we were proud and pitiful. We 
had felt the seductive egotism of tears. We 
also pitied the poor blind girl of Castel Cuillde, 
and should till we reached the porte cochere at 
all events. 

After the reading, the poet revelled in his 
success. He flamed and exulted, but in so 
grateful and manly a spirit of thanks for his 
gift, that none were offended. One easily saw 
he was not city-bred. He had not by attrition 
worn away the original curves and angles of 
his nature. He had not at all tried to squeeze 
himself into the conventional mould, and for 
convenience' sake to make himself like the other 
pins in the pin-paper. 

We breathed deeper in his presence, for in his 



I 



JASMIN. 279 

magnetism we recovered somewhat of our own. 
He shamed the timid make-believe of fashion 
and dandyism, and could have thrown down a 
gauntlet of antique chivalry to Mrs. Grundy 
herself. He breathed, even in the constraint of 
the town, of the blithe freedom of the Southern' 
fields, — and of its garlic. 

I told him of my regret at not finding him in 
his barber shop when I called at Agen, a short 
time before, and that I looked upon the barber's 
basin hanging outside as a shield suspended, after 
the manner of Don Quixote, in challenge to all 
the paynims and giants of the drear land of prose, 
and upon himself as the flower of troubadours. 
A volume containing Mr. Longfellow's trailsla- 
tion of " L'Aveugle del Castel Cuill^e " was put 
into his hand. On seeing the translation, he 
recognized his own at once, and burst into 
enthusiasm. " Though I do not know a word 
of English, T will tell you the meaning of any 
line of it," he cried, " for my translator has care- 
fully followed the irregular movement of my 
lines." We tried him, ar^d invariably he was 
successful. After this the assembly broke up, 
and we took our leave. 

I met him afterwards with more of privacy 
end quiet, but still found him the glowing old 



280 A SHEAF OF PAPERS. 

troubadour he always was, — his tropical nature 
fed by success and praise, the unrestrained flow- 
ering of a noble heart, — a grand human plant, 
near which we all had something added to our 
own littleness. He felt the coldness of Paris 
severely, — both that of the manners and the 
climate. His glow fell comparatively on ice. 
Perhaps it is as well he did not visit New Eng- 
land, as we invited him to do. If your Boston - 
man be the east wind made flesh, his torch 
might have gone out in such an air. He pite- 
ously lamented the want of sun. " They have 
got here a paper lantern instead of a sun. 
They say here of it, ' il luit ; ' how pale and 
colorless that sounds ! When our monarch 
shines upon his subjects we say ' Soleya,' — he 
suns. See what a word and what a sun you 
miss." 



II 



^ 



YANKEE-ISMS, 281 



YANKEE-ISMS. 

iy /TAX MULLER tells us that it is very hard 
to create a new word. A new circum- 
stance, a new condition of living, only can do it. 
Then the word comes to the surface as token of 
this new thing. It is touching, almost, to see 
each new baby repeat in its first babbling the 
echo of a thousand generations. All the nur- 
sery words, Max Miiller tells us, the instinctive 
animal bleating, as it were, of the race, were 
first heard in the Aryan cradle of their birth- 
place. What the dear baby almost thinks he 
invents for himself has had this long life, so 
hard it is to invent a new word. It is enter- 
taining to notice the reception, by the old stock, 
of a new word which has a right to live ; the 
parvenu attracts and repels by his vitality and 
coarseness ; but after a while, as we may see 
shoddy at the Italian opera, he is found to have 
elbowed his way into the classical dictionaries. 



282 .4 SHEAF OF PAPERS. 

He had life in him, and was needed, in spite of 
his raw air and bad manners. To some degree, 
his success is the prediction of the success of 
that democracy of which he is the last-born 
child. One knows by heart the name of some 
of these democrats, who, like a fearful group of 
country cousins, dressed in all defiance of rule, 
have made their way to royal tables. There is, 
at every moment, a fresh importation of these 
phrases, and English purists do shudder when 
they see them arriving upon the shore of classic 
speech. 

Is democracy inevitably associated with a nasal 
accent ? Do the rights of man whine and shrill 
when one would think a lion's roar better befitted 
them ? The truth of it is, this twang, the voce di 
testa^ is simply the result of this climate, which 
drys the vocal chords as it would like those of 
any other instrument. It is not a matter of pref- 
erence on the part of the American, and abso- 
lutely has nothing to do with his political belief, 
not much more than his spitting, which comes 
from the same cause. In fact, the Yankee is but 
a dried Englishman. He has found it out for 
himself in Australia, where his jaw and shoulders' 
pare away, and his voice shrills in that southern 
sunshine. Everywhere the Englishman changes 



YANKEE-ISMS. 283 

when he leaves home. India marks him with a 
seal of gold ; the West Indies gives him a pallor, 
through which his blood shows like the blue 
veins in marble. America, on the whole, does 
the best by him, and what he loses in robustness 
and breadth he gains in quick- wittedness. For- 
tunate Englishman, kept in that tight little island, 
heated by the Gulf stream as by a calorifier, the 
sun tempered by a vapor which it diffuses. It 
is the hot-house of the world, the seed-garden 
of nations. From its shelves are taken the 
potted-plants for germination in every climate. 
There they bloom or wither as they best may. 
But they carry the brand of their green-house 
wherever they go. In the difficult struggle with 
a foreign climate, their roots fondly grope for 
their mother earth, and the sweet waters which 
feed their kindred. 

The twang of the American is one of the signs 
of distress which his nature hangs out to show 
she is not yet at home. His ancestor, so satu- 
rated through his open pores with the moisture 
of England, was like a great sponge, through 
which seas of beer and whiskey could roll with- 
out harm, as we see the ocean does round and 
through the sponge and the madrepore ; yet 
another signal, when the ancestral draught is 



284 A SHEAF OF PAPERS, 

offered to his imprisoned organs, his closed pores 
refusing egress, his devastated inside exclaims in 
protest; whereupon, indignant and disabused, 
he hurries off and joins a temperance society, — 
that society which, living by negation, is content 
to denounce the tankard which Shakespeare and 
Chaucer held, without claiming any thing for 
the quality of the water it recommends, — that 
lovely water, filtered through granite, close, 
keen, crystalline, which seems to the returned 
American, nauseated with the lime-compound 
of Europe, to strike on his bare nerve with only 
too much ecstasy. 

The speech of this porous and spongy ances- 
tor ! How the organ-tubes play through him ! 
How his basso goes down to his boots ! How 
he talks with the whole man ! After that con- 
stitutional emphasis of his, the quick chatter of 
an American gathering resembles somewhat in 
its surface-quickness and brightness, the skip- 
ping of flat stones on a pond. 

The Puritans brought a vocabulary with them, 
— the English of all England and the county 
dialects they came from. Some painful author 
should have gathered these threads of local 
speech together, and made a book. We ought 
to know where every old word came from, — 



TANKBE-ISMS. 285 

which was Devonshire, which Lancashire, and 
which Lincolnshire and Suffolk. These all con- 
tributed, and other counties too. Wales, Ire- 
land, and Scotland, of course, added their quota; 
and one foreign state has left at our great centre. 
New York, marks of sovereignty. The words, 
the ways, the cakes, the toys, still survive there ; 
to Holland we owe the American stage-coach, 
with its springs, its three seats, its leather-strap, 
with bolt of iron. The master-word of New 
York, a short time since, owned Holland for a 
birth-place. "Boss" Tweed, with his fabulous 
proportions, seems a continuation of early Dutch 
history, owing its life to the fertile extravagance 
-of some Washington Irving. 

The American breakfast, so unlike the English 
solitude of dry-toast, and eggs which still bear 
marks of the French custom-house, is Dutch, 
mainly. It has often been compared to the 
glorious Scotch breakfasts, but its elements are 
different. The Scotch winter-breakfast has not 
for its basis that mysterious army of cakes and 
hot-bread, whose grandfather was the waffle of 
Holland. The cruller and other Batavian del- 
icacies are still welcomed by a grateful pos- 
terity. 

Most city-houses here have a formidable en- 



-286 A SHEAF OF PAPERS. 

trance of stone or marble, and even wood, 
which naively says, from its Corinthian whittle, 
"Please let iis make-believe a little." Eng- 
land has a flat door, between ugly railings, a 
rousing knocker, always kept bright, and an 
aristocratic duplicity of bells which never are so. 
Our metal bell-pulls shine like real silver ; a near 
relative of Eglinton's Queen of beauty said, on 
seeing them, '' Now I can write home that the 
Americans are not savages, for they have silver 
bell-pulls." But is not our ponderous portico a 
side-derivation from the " stoop" of Dutch New 
York ? It would seem so. 

East Anglia furnished perhaps a majority of 
the New England settlers. It is a very vener- 
able part of England, and its capital. Bury St. 
Edmunds, has all the mark of it. Some of the 
most famous abbeys were not far off, and Carlyle's 
great ecclesiastical hero was there at home. In 
that remote district, religious ideas gained te- 
nacity and strength. What wonder, then, that 
this new exodus to a new Canaan should be 
largely furnished thence. There are dictionaries 
of its old words, — one by Forby , who claims for 
his local provincialisms the authority of great 
age. They were the better English, he thinks, 
but too far from London to live. Shakespeare 



YANKEE-ISMS. 287 

has not disdained many of them, nor should 
we. But the world's wheel cannot be put back. 
Words drop out and are gone ; and so he la- 
ments the loss of much good English. 

On opening his book, to the delight of the 
New Englander, every page bristles with Yan- 
kee-isms. You do not find " cricket" there, for 
that comes from Lancashire, as is shown by foot- 
notes to a novel of Mrs. Gaskell's. Neither that 
nor "booby-hut" are known in New York, — 
the latter we owe to Suffolk. All the quaint old 
farm words our fathers knew are in Forby, and 
such choice Yankee-isms as "slick," "riled," &c. 

Oddly enough, in defiance of our theory of the 
twang here being due to climate, the Suffolk 
whine, which still exists, for we have heard it, 
though it is, however, rather a drawl than a 
twang, is abundantly referred to in Forby, and 
elsewhere. 

So it seems that England furnished both the 
Yankee words and the Yankee drawl she laughs 
at. Indeed, she is laughing at herself ; for when 
she injuriously says " Yankee," she is merely 
saying English. " Yankee" is the Indian modi- 
fication of English. 

There is a Yankee word, the origin of which 
we fondly believe to have traced. " Chowder," 



288 A SHEAF OF PAPERS. 

from la cRaudiere ; the kettle of fish tells the 
word. We suppose, when our early fishermen 
on the Banks mingled with their French breth- 
ren, they naturally preferred a savory French 
mess to their own ; they talked of it when at 
home to their wives, who, besides asking how it 
was made, asked its name. " They said some- 
thing about chowder," might have mumbled 
some old fisherman. This is, therefore, perhaps, 
one of the words we owe to France ; and from 
Spanish America has rattled down upon Texas 
and California Spanish words like hailstones, 
and which, as English ones, are slowly making 
the tour of the world. 



AT TEE MEDIUM'S. 289 



AT THE MEDIUM'S. 

TT was the same old place. A room rather 
musty ; furniture and chairs of the hopeless 
order, showing at least that the resident would 
not be likely to refuse bank-notes for honest 
service. 

The ornaments of the room were of a low 
type, as to taste ; a little flourish of make- 
believes, such as expatriated sea-shells on the 
mantel, a child with a lamb- in lithograph, so 
pink in the cheeks and with so innocent a look 
in its saucer-blue eyes, that it gave one a fresh 
peep into Arcadia and the age of gold. 

Then, too, the cruel photographs, looking like 
caricatures without their fun. So unlike were 
they to human beings, that we looked on them 
with awe as possibly intended to represent 
spirits. 

It was the same old circle too. Not all indi- 
vidually the same, but the types were. There 
was the same poor woman, more than half a 
13 s 



290 A SEEAF OF PAPERS. 

spirit herself, with a face of chronic enthusiasm. 
Submissive to all the heavenly powers could ask 
of her, and believing her Henry was appealing 
to her in every creak, whether of the furniture, 
or a rap of the spirit- knuckle of her beloved one. 
She would have posted that night to Nevada, if 
such had been Henry's bidding ; and any rubbish 
that hap-hazard or some tricksy Ariel could con- 
coct, would pass with her for the mandate of 
heaven. 

And then there was the clumsy-minded, defi- 
nite man, who believed there was something in 
it, but who desired a proof of his own contriving. 
For instance, if the mustard-spoon could be 
removed from the cruet, he was satisfied, though 
he looked coldly on any disturbance of the pep- 
per-pot. He would recount to you how he had. 
come for ten consecutive evenings, in the hope 
of seeing a particular book moved, or a particular 
thing said, unknown to any one but himself, and 
at last got it, and retired hilarious. 

Then there was the shamefaced visitor, repeat- 
ing little pater-nosters to himself, and only there 
to oblige a clerical friend, who was sure it was 
diabolism, and wished his opinion. His opinion ! 
As well ask the opinion of one in the presence 
of the midnight assassin as to Darwin's conject- 



AT THE MEDIUM'S. 291 

ures, as his, under his prescribed formula of 
spirit and matter. Inexpressibly revolted at the 
cheapness and simplicity of the whole thing, 
perhaps what most revolted him was the levity 
and frolicsomeness of the so-called spirits. An 
immortal soul to return to its place of probation 
for no nobler end than to rap noise and joggle 
tables, — it offended every higher instinct. In 
vain could you suggest to him that people are 
not so much changed by going into another 
room ; that laughter and fun are what here niost 
distinguish us from the brute creation, and that 
perhaps a little of it may survive death ; and 
that the spirits were not there laden with a 
message from the Most High, nor, apparently 
awkward as it sounded, were they there to 
enforce Christian doctrine, or strew around them 
many a holy text. Why they were there, if real 
and not illusive, we might never find out, but 
certainly never could by leaving them severely 
alone. 

He retired to his home, more than ever con- 
vinced that news and precepts from outre tombe 
were forbidden and objectionable, and he found 
in his somewhat time-worn and faded ritual all 
the manna his soul needed. He considered the 
hierophants of this sad delusion as the very peo- 



292 A SHEAF OF PAPERS. 

pie referred to by the prophet, as those who 
" peep and mutter," though what those words 
may mean, as so applied, he was puzzled to say. 

And then there was the average Bostonian, 
clever, quick, steeped in no reverential shadows, 
— thinking his foot-rule a very fit instrument 
for measuring Cosmos, — knowing every thing, 
yet believing little, with a sort of short-handed 
logic in favor of matter over spirit ; my friend 
Doughty was there to represent many of his 
respectable city. 

"We had not much to instruct or amuse us. 
Certain St.. Vitus convulsions of the table, 
strange currents of cold air, the feeblest of 
responses to most ardent questionings, and yet 

" Over all tliere hung a cloud of fear, 

A sense of mystery the spirit daunted, 
And said as plain as whisper in the ear. 
The place is haunted." 

Slips of paper were written on and tossed to 
individuals. Strange pushes were made against 
our legs, as from the paws of Newfoundland 
dogs, and seeming as if they could traverse bone 
and flesh as if they had been air. I watched 
the cold eye of Doughty. Its quick disappro- 
bation was for a moment changed to a glow of 
wonder and interest, as suddenly a slip was 



AT THE MEDIUM'S. 293 

tossed before him, and on it written, "Don't 
forget Helen and the moss agate." 

Doughty swiftly rose from his chair and was 
lost to us in the room for a few minutes. There 
was a look of struggle and pain in his face when 
he returned, but he took apparently little fur- 
ther interest in the proceedings. 

Soon the spirits tapered off into incompetency, 
and the meeting broke up. 

We put on our Avraps and overcoats, and were 
composed and quieted by the soft trouble of the 
snow. It fell so directly down, windless, silent, 
like a benediction after the heat oiid anxiety of 
the medium's room. As we trudged home we 
talked the thing over, somewhat after the fashion 
of the following dialogue : — 

Trust!/. — Well, old fellow, what do you think 
of it? 

Doughty. — Rubbish I should say, — nothing 
for a man's mind seriously to take hold of. 
Vulgar and offensive to every delicate instinct. 
And over and over the same thing. Could you 
not see how demoralized, even idiotized, that 
poor woman, who believed every thing, was 
always growing ? For a matter of curiosity, a 
man may go once, but no sensible man could try 
it twice, and if he did, he soon would become a 
cretin. What do you think of it yourself? 



294 A SHEAF OF PAPERS. 

Trusty. — I think it the most interesting 
and suggestive thing I have met in my life's 
pilgrimage. 

Doughty. — Indeed ? I knew that yon often 
went on these spirit-hunts ; but I thought it with 
you partly habit, and the rest kill-time. 

Trusty. — Those, and something besides. You 
are not in the charmed circle, but a critical out- 
sider. In that you resemble the outside world ; 
but I am steeped in it, and it educates in me a 
new power, something mixed of all our powers ; 
it stimulates my imaginative intellect, and even 
gives my scientific curiosity hopes of a solution. 

Doughty. — Science ! I thought that it and 
spiritualism were in irreconcilable opposition. 

Trusty. — Yes, till now, and for a while yet. 
You notice how the public turn to the men of 
science for solution of the wonder ; no church- 
man or bishop is invited. What do you think 
Cotton Mather would say to that? 

Doughty. — Having made such a mess with 
his witches, he might not like to burn his fin- 
gers again. 

Trusty. — But it is a sign of the times, this 
reference of all unexplained things to science. 
She tried the explanation, and ignominiously 
failed. It was not merely that the savans 



AT TEE MEDIUM'S, 295 

brought prejudice and disgust, heavy weights in 
the scales of the imponderables, but there was a 
factor in the sum, namely, man's mind, which 
science cannot handle. They are physicians, 
not metaphysicians. Faraday was explaining 
by unconscious pressure a fact which included 
tables whirled to the ceiling and about the room, 
with no one touching them. Of course, like the 
tables, his explanation came at last to the 
ground. 

But the public are right in going to the men 
of science. They are our rulers now, and know 
so much, they might know every thing. Besides, 
it is a pet theory of mine, that through these 
attempts the world will finally see a reconciliation 
between the man of faith and the man of knowl- 
edge. 

The line is sharply drawn now. The prayer- 
test is a rather impious expression of it ; and 
there are scientifijc books as bare of religion and 
faith and hope as your hand. AH that is as it 
should be. 

The parson has bullied us so long, it is well 
for another to try a trick at the wheel. And 
how coy and submissive Boanergea and all his 
thunders have grown, before, these valorous 
Tyndalls and Darwins I 



296 A SHEAF OF PAPERS. 

It makes one think that before long the 
churches will be turned into lecture-rooms, and 
on the sacramental table may be carried on 
physical and chemical experiments. 

It looks odd, doesn't it, that on all sides fine 
churches are going up with us, when the 
thoughts of the congregation turn to the insti- 
tutes of science for the key of this world, and 
perhaps even of the next. By the by, why did 
you leave us so hurriedly ? 

Doughty. — I was rather cut up by so unex- 
pected a reference to one of the dearest, most 
vital passages of my life. It is not a thing I 
should care to talk about; it is too sacred. 
There either was some lucky guess-work about 
me, or some care in getting information ; though, 
even so, I don't see how the medium could find 
it out. 

Trusty. — Why not say coincidence? The 
word explains nothing, nor does one believe it ; 
but it serves to get rid of an awkward difficulty. 
What with the cheating of mediums, their 
exposure, and the clever coincidences they 
accomplish, we really get to think that there is 
little in this new matter but rascality. Now 
this will not do. No sensible man who has 
examined it, believes in the rascality, or finds 



AT THE MEDimrS. 297 

cheating to explain any thing. Why, I have 
seen at midday, near a window, with a curtain 
up, hands — children's, women's, old men's — 
playing about the face of a person sitting oppo- 
site me ; the medium, a country boy with a red 
head, having both his hands holding that per- 
son's arm on the other side. 

All as clear as day, and only four of us in the 
room. Now I know that no apparatus could 
contrive that ; you know it, or should ; and after 
that, do you suppose I am detained with stories 
of cheating as a serious explanation ? I grant 
there is something in the accusation which suits 
the denying, sly, prosaic spirit of our people 
well. Let them enjoy their stories, but not 
come to me with them as satisfactory explana- 
tions. Is it the imperfection and shortcoming 
of the spirit-efforts which trouble you ; the thin- 
ness of the messages ; their want of any infor- 
mation we desire ; the use of earthly metaphor 
to describe heavenly things ; the failure of the 
spirits to accomplish their promises, or to do the 
things they should, as we think? If these 
things trouble you or me, it is no wonder; but 
let us think it over. 

If spiritualism is a true thing, it is at its 
beginnings. To be -sure, it has had its forerun- 
13* 



298 A SHEAF OF PAPERS. 

ners, hints and glimpses of what was coming, 
from the earliest time. 

It is cousinrgerman too, and related, to all 
priestly practices in all the religions of the past. 
The same indefinable something is appealed to 
in the New Testament ; it is this, namely, the 
hope of the life to come. But as a complete 
thing, presenting itself now all over the world, 
it is very young. It is only a toddling baby. 
Perhaps it does not know what it wants, what 
it can do. It seems, like a baby, to be trying 
constantly new efforts. It seems to learn by 
practice, and it begins to give hints of its pur- 
poses. 

Then, again, we are putting it on its trial, 
when it may care little about that. We are 
surprised and offended ; but is the author of it 
and all things surprised, or careful to make our 
inapprehensive brains comprehend it at once ? 

Perhaps it is diabolism. This is an awkward 
hypothesis, just as all Christian sects are puri- 
fying their old superstitions, and treating old 
Nickie Ben even worse than did the faithful of 
the Middle Ages, who only made fun of him and 
overturned his trick ; but now he is historically 
explained away, — improved off the face of the 
earth. Wickedness and suffering remain; if 



AT THE MEDIUM'S. 299 

they are diminisliing, it is so slowly that one 
must believe in evil, as did our ancestors ; but 
the personal devil seems fading ; nor is his reign 
likely to be recovered through the ugliest help 
of spiritualism. 

But what suggest to us the most of comfort 
and hope, that it all may not be a snare and a 
delusion, are the new conquering theories of the 
solidarity of creation, at least as to our world, 
and the dogma of evolution. 

By the by, did you know that the father of 
the theory, Wallace, avows, when reviewing Mr. 
Owen's fascinating book, that he cannot with- 
hold his assent from Mr. Owen's conclusions, 
i.e., spirit agency, if Mr. Owen's facts and state- 
ments are to be trusted ? and that they are so, he 
gladly admits. The same inquiring method into 
the hidden things of Nature which had led Mr. 
Owen to his belief, the same logic which forced 
him to the conviction of spirit agency, Mr. Wal- 
lace avowed he employed in the studies of sci- 
ence, nor could he refuse them to another. 

Of course, Mr. Wallace is said to have deteri- 
orated in mental power since this. 

Connu ! the old dodge I We remember it in 
brave Dr. Hare's case, and in so many others, 
and smile superior. 



300 A SBEAF OF PAPERS. 

Remembering this, the theory of evolution, 
of development, and progress, is it too wonder- 
ful that man should be taking to himseK a new 
power, — a fresh relation with nature? 

As the soul must have been evolved some- 
where along the line of travel from the ascidian 
to Newton, — as the bark in dogs got created 
some day from their silent ancestor, — so a sixth 
sense, a sensibility to occult forces, is growing in 
man, and its misty and mysterious beginning is 
called spiritualism. 

When it shall have fully unfolded itself, may 
we not hope to find the key to all the intrusions 
in the world's history from the realm beyond, — 
one of easy explanation ; one consistent ever, 
and law-abiding ? Can He who is law, be law-. 
less in His highest things? 

It is the grandeur of the sweep, the range of 
the orbit, which confuses. Like the comet, so 
hard to measure and compute, and yet whose 
shattered fragments may be the only visitors we 
know from the worlds above us, — so the trails 
of this spiritual meteor may have dropped to 
earth from their fringes, the aerolites men call 
miracles, and the intelligences men now call 
spirits. 

Wait fifty years, and you will see the new 



AT THE MEDIUM'S. 301 

antennae of the soul grow and strengthen till an 
added sense shall have been gained, — new rela- 
tions between the law of love and the laws of 
matter ; and then perhaps we may begin to know 
the new heaven and the new earth, of which we 
have heard men speak, but not intelligibly. And 
if spiritualism turns out a failure and a mistake, 
it is no matter, — we did not make it, and are 
not responsible for it. Trust Him who did ; 
and as the last of His gifts is not likely to be 
unworthy of Him, let us rest upon Him, in con- 
fidence and faith. 

Doughty, — Well said. I must think of these 
things more seriously. Come now, we are just 
at my house, let us go in and soothe our specu- 
lations with the blandness of the weed of the 
philosopher. Come in ! 



302 A SHEAF OF PAPERS. 



HOURS WITH THE POETS. 

^ INHERE is in man an insatiable hunger to 
know other men. As he does not well 
understand himself, he thinks that knowledge 
of them may help him to self-knowledge. And 
it certainly does. But the power of knowing 
others is not merely in being with them, but 
depends upon a mysterious gift quite peculiar 
with some people of subtle approach to their 
nature ; they feel the person they are with as if 
secretly they carried with them a photographic 
plate upon which the features they study are 
impressed, without help of word or explanation. 
Without something of this power, intercourse 
with others is barren and null, but too much of 
this absorption of another's nature in one's own 
— this sympathy, this antipathy, as it is called, 
as it attracts or repels — is painful. 

Zschokke relates that he had this gift to a 
degree which annoyed him. Sitting with a 
stranger in a coach, or meeting him on a road, 
a picture of that person's whole life would 



BOUBS WITB THE POETS. ^OB 

panoramically pass before his eyes. And when 
asked to say what it had told him, his appre- 
hension was generally correct. It is this un- 
desired sympathy with the mental condition of 
those about, or half sympathy, which makes 
a discomfort often unintelligible. People half 
know each other, and mistake that half for the 
whole. And antipathy mistakes itself for can- 
did judgment. It is supposed to be impossible 
to meet a person daily and not to know him, 
when nothing is more uncertain than that it 
should be so. Contact is not possession, how- 
ever often repeated. A young Scotchman told 
me he never could do justice to the greatness of 
Walter Scott, because he met him daily in Edin- 
burgh, and only saw his lameness, his look of 
a canny advocate, and any other unimportant 
marks of the man. Another, with more of the 
power of silently entering into character, might 
perhaps have divined his career from one inter- 
view. It required but a look from George Fox 
to read the soul of Cromwell, and to feel come 
from him, just before his end, what he called " a 
waft of death." 

Travel has this advantage, that it takes one 
from one's self; above all, from that supposed 
self which the half-knowledge of half-friends 



304 A 8SEAF OF PAPERS. 

surrounds us with. Some can only know one 
by one's faults, and, as if they were above such 
error, describe half the town by their shady side, 
— ticketing off people and labelling them as if 
their superscription was final. The meanest nat- 
ure can comprehend the evil in which it shares, 
but it requires, to judge a lofty one, to be on a 
level with it. Only Alp can talk to Alp. 

Too soon death comes to provide a strange 
reconciliation ; dilated through its mystery, the 
good of a man is then universally seen, and his 
faults disappear. They are felt at once to have 
been but the hinderance and accident of his 
better part, — that the true man is what he was, 
and not what he failed to be. 

How strikingly this was shown in the case of 
the beloved senator whom we have lately lost, 
has been universally noticed. He never was in 
comfortable relations with his own townsfolk, 
especially his natural peers, those who shared 
with him culture and social advantage. With 
many there was an unreasoning sentiment of 
hostility. But it was not wholly that. That 
senator was a disturber of the public peace, — 
that peace which men fear to disturb because it 
rests upon dangerous foundations. Conserva- 
tism is not so much the love of what is, as 



SOVltS WITS THE POETS. 305 

distrust of what may be. With many, any com- 
fort and security is better than to risk what may 
lose every thing. They cling to broken spars 
rather than risk floating away upon a sea of 
speculation. Nor is it wholly this either ; a 
genuine patriotism is interwoven with what the 
conscience disapproves in a nation's life. 

All or nothing is the feeling, and any who 
disparages a part is held as violating the whole. 
I have never seen a copper-head, as the spirit of 
ci"\dl discord so ungraciously called many a fine 
fellow, able satisfactorily to explain his apparent 
want of patriotism when the crisis had come. 
Of course it mostly was fed by unreasoning and 
timid conservatism, but that it was feeling, and 
not judgment or conscience, was shown in many 
ways, — in assaults on the men who upheld the 
flag, rating them at their worst, and caricaturing 
their foibles. But I take it mainly their heat 
came from genuine love of country. 

Of course we must allow also for the blight 
upon approval which comes from envy, and the 
supposed insolence of moral pretensions, — a 
more acute insolence than could proceed from 
the loftiest aristocracy. 

Nor should it be forgotten that we have en- 
couraged timidity till all courage becomes sus- 



306 



A SBEAF OF PAPERS. 



pect. So certain have we been that nothing 
will palliate the crime of duelling, that our 
representatives went to Washington like sheep 
to the slaughter, and yet public opinion would 
not fairly support the course it had directed. I 
know nothing meaner than when insult was 
heaped upon Mr. Everett, so stainless and so 
honorable, which he could not resent, public 
opinion at home complained of him for not 
being a fire-eater. But then timidity is cousin- 
germ an to meanness. 

This love of hearing of our fellow-men, and 
especially of famous ones, leads me to make a 
few notes of some people I have met. I merely 
render an impression, and do not undertake an 
estimate of them. 

And yet it is singular how swiftly, completely, 
and not incorrectly, a mere glimpse of a man 
may explain him. 

On thinking of him afterwards, we seem to 
have known him a long time and to need no more. 
He stamped himself into our receptive mood, as 
the seal needs but one push into the ready wax. 

This is why it is desirable — if it can be done 
naturally, and not with the cold-blooded effron- 
tery of an "interviewer" — to find them and 
seek them out. 



HOURS WITH THE POETS. 307 

And we Americans are doubly interested in 
hearing of, if we cannot meet, famous folks ; our 
provincial relation with Europe, to be sure, daily 
disappearing, and our reading mania. 

We certainly deserve the word " curious," 
which attaches of old to the Yankee, famous 
from the first for his questioning capacity, and 
undoubtedly, unlike our English brethren, tak- 
ing little interest in hearing of noblemen as 
compared with men of letters. Indeed the no- 
blemen have done nothing for us, and the men 
of letters a great deal. They are our nearest 
friends, and in just that way, as above said, so 
many other friends do not get to us, — inside us, 
they do ; for theirs is no sullen half sympathy, 
but they give us themselves, their thoughts, 
and their feelings. 

And the more they do this, as is the case with 
the poets, the more near they come to us, the 
more are they beloved. 

The poets, indeed, are the avowed pets of 
the world. Nor will the world be denied. 
Whether the hedges of Faringford succeed in 
fencing in the shyest as well as the most musical 
of singers, or the free wind of the open street 
blow about him, as with the venerable and lusty 
bard of New York, still the world will not be 



308 A SHEAF OF PAPERS. 

denied its love. The poet has made life sweet 
to us ; has revealed us to ourselves ; has been 
the compensation and complement of joy for the 
daily fret and toil ; and everywhere there is an 
affection which would express itself loudly were 
not the relation of the poet and his reader so 
secret and sacred that any noisy reference to it 
becomes unseemly. 

When I was a boy, a journey was a solemn 
thing. Kind mothers superintended the packing 
of every trunk, and friends were beset to furnish 
the letters, without which society refuses access 
to the most enterprising traveller. Prayers 
were put up in churches even for so short a 
journey as to New York. Now a youth steps in 
from Japan or Coomassie, and we look at him 
almost as if he had onty come round the corner. 
And so I did not want for letters ; indeed they 
seemed to me superfluously many, for a young 
person has not quite the same curiosity in par- 
ticular people that he has in particular places. 
Places first, people afterwards. He has not as 
yet grown his love of human nature ; that comes 
later. People all seem tolerably alike, even great 
ones, — but Paris, Marathon, Rome, ah! 

Fortunately for me was it that this is so, for 
all my letters, except a few I had accidentally 



HOURS WITH THE POETS. 309 

put in my pocket, were ravished from me at 
London. I went, as we all did then, in a sailing 
vessel, and got out at Portsmouth, and let my 
ship proceed to London, where I reclaimed my 
luggage. My letters were so numerous that the 
red-faced and stupid official, into whose clutches 
I fell at the custom-house, opened them ; they 
were not sealed, which should have made them 
sacred, and finding them long, in a rage he pro- 
nounced them cheats, trying to defraud his Maj- 
esty's post-office, and mailed them every one. 
They flew all over the world, and in every 
language drew imprecations upon the stupid 
Yankee, who could without showing himself 
give others the expense of a useless letter. 
How many a dull visit that loss may have saved 
me I shall never know ; but the famous men to 
whom some of the lost ones were directed I 
shall ever regret missing. 

One was to Charles Lamb. What reader 
would not be willing to hear one word more of 
that incomparable humorist? But I have none 
to tell him. 

One, too, was to Godwin, author of " Caleb 
Williams." He died the year of my arrival, and 
it would have been pleasant to see the veteran. 
Such old faces carry one back to an earlier 



310 A SHEAF OF PAPERS. 

epoch, and they always show they do. For 
every epoch has its face, as well as its manners 
and costume. These faces are like coins worn 
and faded with friction with the world, but the 
date is still there. 

I did have a letter to O'Connell, and in my 
despair I drove at once to his house. Unfort- 
unately he was out ; but, oddly enough, be- 
fore a year was over, I heard of him as 
denouncing the London custom-house and its 
insolence to foreigners ; so my visit might have 
had results if the great Irishman had been at 
home. 

And I had a letter to Coleridge. Knowing 
the state of his health, I sent my letter to Dr. 
Oilman, with whom he lived, to find when I 
might present myself. He answered that he 
would let me know. I had not long to wait, 
for the good news came that his great friend 
was better, and that if I would go the day after 
Mr. Oilman's note came, I should certainly see 
and speak with the illustrious poet. Fired with 
that reverential enthusiasm with which such a 
man was generally regarded, I ordered a cab 
for a drive to Highgate, where Dr. Oilman lived. 
I took up the " Times " to occupy myself till the 
cab came, and the first thing my eye fell on was, 



HOURS WITH TEE POETS. 311 

" We stop the press to announce the sudden 
death of S. T. Coleridge, at the house of Dr. 
Gihnan, at Highgate, this morning." 

Of coui'se the cab was not needed, and I 
bowed before such a catastrophe ; but deter- 
mined not to lose sight at least of the place of 
so much interest; so, two years after, I with 
others visited Dr. Gilman, who spoke much of 
the poet, showed us his books and chair, and 
many casts of hands and feet taken for his 
pictures by Allston, who was a dear friend of 
Coleridge ; and, among other things, a superb 
picture by Allston, so recalling Titian that 
when on a visit to Coleridge, Woodhull, the 
great London picture-dealer, cried, after salut- 
ing Coleridge, " Allow me to congratulate you 
on your fine Titian." But soon after, changing 
his seat, he exclaimed with astonishment, " Why, 
it has not been painted twenty years, — what is 
it?" 

Coleridge replied with a smile, " A picture by 
an American friend of mine." 

Not far from Dr. Gilman lived a Dr. Holm, 
a German and a friend of Spurtzheim. Spurtz- 
heim had just died at Boston, and I had brought 
his bust to Dr. Holm. 

He invited me to dinner, and placed the bust 



,312 - A SHEAF OF PAPERS. 

in the middle of the table, and said at it a kind 
of grace. 

After dinner, he took me to his dead-house, as 
he called it, — a receptacle for his useless casts. 
Phrenology then was in its infancy, and was 
surrounded by enthusiasm. The doctor was an 
ardent adept in making casts, and the moment I 
saw him, which was at a call made while I break- 
fasted, he offered to make a cast of my head, 
and without knowing the frightfully disagree- 
able, and even dangerous thing it is, if the face 
be included, I steadily declined. " Then allow 
me at once to examine your bumps." 

"Do it," I said, " while I do the same thing 
over this Qgg.'^'' And we manipulated simulta- 
neousl}^ 

Later, when visiting the poet Wordsworth, 
referring to a letter he held in his hand, he said, 
"It is proper you should know what physical 
anguish Coleridge's autopsy reveals, as palliation 
for his evil habit of opium eating. Let it be to 
us a lesson not to condemn where we do not 
know all." The dead-house of Dr. Holm re- 
vealed something perhaps of this. Taking, 
like the grave-digger in Hamlet, two plaster 
skulls from his huge heap, he made me com- 
pare them. 



HOURS WITH THE POETS. 



313 



"You see that iu the region of ideality, one 
of the largest in the head of Coleridge, there 
is the difference in measurement of an inch. 
And yet they both are taken, but at different 
epochs, from Coleridge." 

I did not see Coleridge, but afterwards I 
often did his daughter, whose " Phantasmion " 
has just been reprinted after so many years. 

Never did author and book better correspond. 
In her marble paleness and exquisite delicacy of 
profile, she looked like one out of Fairy-land, 
and I doubt not that it was to her her real 
country, a land of dream and moonlight, where 
the desires of the mind are made real, and the 
impossible is the commonplace. 

Wordsworth I had the good fortune to find 
at home, when in my summer jaunt through 
the lake country I reached his charming neigh- 
borhood. He received me with great courtesy, 
inquired with much interest after certain dis- 
tinguished literary men of America, and said of 
a volume of poems by Miss Hannah Gould, 
which he held in his hand, — 

" They are very amiable verses." 

There was somehow a world of self-revela- 
tion in these words, so accented. 

" Be good enough, if you can, to thank her 
14 



314 A SHEAF OF PAPERS. 

for me ; for my eyes are so bad, I cannot see to 
write much." 

Presently, his daughter, afterwards Mrs. Quil- 
ian, bounced into the room, heated with exer- 
cise, and spattered with mud from head to foot. 

" I have been walking thirteen miles, father ! " 
she said ; and evidently every mile had told on 
her. With that astonishing naivete which the 
English possess, so amiably disregardful of the 
feelhigs of others, she said, turning to me, — 

" And I hear that your American women take 
no exercise, and, as they say, ' enjoy very bad 
health.' What age do they generally reach? " 

" They are so weak," I replied with a smile, 
"that almost none passes the age of puberty." 

Unfortunately for her, as I have heard it said, 
the victim of too active habits of exercise, in a 
few years the grass of Grasmere church-yard 
waved above her grave. 

Presently the poet said, — 

"Would you not like to see my cascade?" and 
with the greatest kindness, taking his hat and 
stick, he accompanied me to it. On the way, he 
read me a little lecture on the enjoyment of 
Nature. With Nature, when at her best, a little 
suffices. A graceful tree or two, before a slight 
but happily-curved fall of water, and the blue 



HOURS WITH THE POETS. 315 

sky behind, are enough to saturate man's spirit 
with enjoyment. If the quality is good, it suf- 
fices him ; and more does not increase that qual- 
ity, but only unduly strains his spirit and sense 
in the effort to grasp all. 

" I find that many of your Americans speak 
of the scenery of your lakes as if it must be 
excellent in proportion to the many miles of 
water ; but we know that cannot be so. Stand- 
ing on the shore of your greater lakes, with no 
opposite shore visible, the view must have the 
insipid width of the sea, without the living pulse 
of its tides. Those Americans do not see with 
their senses, or their heart, but only through the 
eyes of vanity and national conceit." 

I could not explain to the poet that Ameri- 
cans take a personal pride in bigness, which has 
led to a saying that the only things in America 
which are as big as we feel are the trees of Cali- 
fornia. 

There was exquisite good sense and feeling in 
all the poet said of the scenery to which he led 
me. It was a miniature, but perfect; a com- 
plete picture, seemingly brought nearer and 
more familiar by its limitations. The aspect of 
the poet was really grand. There was a look 
of the country about him ; his nose was rugged 



316 A SHEAF OF PAPERS. 

and strong, and his weak grey eyes had weary 
pent-houses for lids, as if tired with long service 
to their owner, amid the glorious tarns and fells 
of Cumberland. It was one of those- faces one 
does not easily forget ; among Americans I have 
sometimes thought that Mr. Alcott had a strange 
resemblance to him ; and indeed their moral 
tone, so much the source of expression, is cer- 
tainly alike. 

Walking early the next morning, — one of the 
most blithe and sparkling of English summer 
days, which are exceeded nowhere, having, with 
all their brightness, no taint of dust or aridity, 
but freshness everywhere, — I went from Am- 
bleside to Chiswick in full delight; my spirits 
were so high that when a ehar-d-hanc passed 
me, with some girls facing backward, as it dis- 
appeared I gaily waved my stick to them, which 
was answered by waves of their handkerchiefs. 
When at Chiswick, — after visiting the so-called 
museum, and finding, with delighted surprise, 
that the ^olian harp which had charmed my 
childhood came from that very room, while at 
the window spirits were recalling the past, in 
those pathetic tones we know so well, over the 
chords of a similar one, — I ventured to visit 
Mr. Robert Southey. The house was plain and 



EOUBS WITH TEE FOETS. 317 

formal, most unlike the charming residence of 
Wordsworth, and an ascending gravel walk led 
to it. On my presenting myself, the servant 
looked at me with surprise, as if he admitted 
not many visitors, and showed me into a dark 
room near the door. I held my introductory 
letter in my hand, and vainly waited for an ar- 
rival. After a while the door slowly opened, 
and a low voice said, — 

" What is your business with me ? " 

To which the reply was, — 

" If you should chance to be Mr. Southey, 
and there were a light in the room, you would 
see extended to you a letter of introduction 
from ," naming the writer. 

At once there was a hearty welcome ; evi- 
dently a surprise to him was this name, and he 
said, — 

" Won't you come into the other room?" 

When there, the previous darkness made it 
impossible for me to see any thing ; but when I 
did, merry faces were in a titter of laughter, 
and a lady said, — 

" We have seen you before ; this morning on 
the road!" 

It was all right, and my unwarranted salute 
had been taken in good part. 



318 A SHEAF OF PAPERS. 

Mr. SoTithey was wholly different in appear- 
ance from Wordsworth. He had not that breadth 
and loftiness of expression, nor that great width 
of temple, so striking in Wordsworth, — ideality 
but his strong development was the organ o\ 
the marvellous ; hence those tales in nnrhymed 
verse, which are lifted, as it were, on the wings 
of wonder. His nose was a strong and elegant 
aquiline, his eyes dark and lustrous, his hair 
crisp and curling. He looked the scholar and 
the gentleman that every inch he was. But 
there was an element of excitement at times in 
his manner, from which one might perhaps have 
predicted the sad close of his days. This excite- 
ment came to a high pitch when, after sending 
for the verses of a Boston poetess, Mrs. Brooks, 
— whose love strains, he protested, in fire and 
passion had never been matched since those of 
Sappho, and which he would like so to say in a 
review of her poems, but that they were dedi- 
cated to him, — he read them. His voice was a 
strange sing-song, as if intoxicated with the lilt 
of the measure. We fear that the fair authoress 
is mostly forgotten at home now, but certainly 
some of the poems were admirable, particularly 
one beginning, — 



HOURS WITH THE POETS. 319 

" And as the dove from far Palmyra flying, 

To where the distant founts of Antioch gleam, 

Weary, exhausted, trerabhng, panting, dymg, 
Alights and sips the desert's bitier stream. 

So many a soul, o'er life's drear desert faring," &c. 

We quote from memory. 

A couple of years after, with friends, I re- 
newed my visit ; still doubly at the oar we found 
the gallant poet. He rowed on the lake to keep 
up his strength, and was giving the world, from 
his large and well-filled library, yearly proofs of 
his existence. 

But the waters of Castaly ran low, and the 
prose of " The Doctor" was the most consider- 
able of his later works. 

Soon after, we saw Wilson, author of the " Isle 
of Palms," but whose real hit in life was the 
'^ Noctes Ambrosianse," which college boys in 
my time read with a wild delight, for its rollick- 
ing fun, mischievous toryism, and poetry, dashed 
with the flavor of Glenlivet. We saw him pre- 
siding at one of the tables of the British Associ- 
ation of Science, which met then in Edinburgh. 
His physique was superb ; he had almost too 
much strength, as one may say, for a poet ; and 
the hair waving about his powerful face made 
him look like a lion. 

Of all the poets of those days but one sur- 



320 A SHEAF OF PAPERS. 

vives, Proctor, — Barry Cornwall; and him I 
met seven years ago, in a most poetic and quaint 
old house at Malvern. His singing robes are 
long folded away, and kept by the guardians of 
such things for the renewed youth which awaits 
him soon ; but as long as earth may possess him, 
his many lovers will still see, though battered and 
decayed his body, his spirit shining through the 
chinks of ruin ; and, when young, was any one 
ever younger than he ! What buoyancy, fresh- 
ness, and power in the beautiful songs we all 
knew so well I in them we find the poet's real 
age, ever young ; and the body's decay shall 
prove only the hinderance of the moment. 



THREE YOUNG MEN. 321 



THREE YOUNG MEN. 

nPHERE has always been give and take be- 
tween the mother-country and her Amer- 
ican colony. Of course, at first every thing was 
drawn for the infant colony from the stores of 
the old lady. The few things the emigrant 
absolutely needed were the money, the metal 
and wooden ware, clothes, seeds, &c. ; and upon 
the whole was laid the Bible of Cromwell. 

Germans of our day fetch over a world of 
useless material, — the rough places of their 
boxes filled in with that stupendous linen store 
of theirs ; but they must yield to the " May- 
flower " and her store of furniture. Time, like 
a magician, has drawn out of that vessel, as has 
been said before, furniture enough for a dozen 
" Mayflowers " to carry ; and something more, 
too, the magician managed to find in her, — that 
seed of energy and faith which has also multi- 
plied in the most astonishing manner. 

But at first, of course, the colony could not 
return much to the mother-country. The child 
14* u 



322 A SEEAF OF PAPERS. 

was in leading-strings, — was made to sit well 
tied into its little chair, and pap-fed till it grew 
big and noisy, and then, after being scolded and 
rapped about the ears with the spoon, it upset 
the chair and set up for itself. 

After a while it began to send something to 
the old country in return for its nurture and the 
few royal letters-patent for lands it could have 
taken without them. Men, however, did not 
often belong to the exchange between the na- 
tions ; though many Americans of distinction 
passed through England, and even for a while 
resided there, they generally came home again. 

All but the unlucky tories, who soon found, 
as every colonist of England has found on re- 
turning home, the secret of his unimportance, 
and wished himself back where he counted for 
something, though the government he hated 
should be lord over him. 

In the art-world, nobody could have suspected 
that America could bestow any thing on the 
haughty mother. But when the artless Quaker 
of Pennsylvania was known as the friend of a 
king as art-less as himself, the world looked on 
amazed. There must have been something in 
the placid dignity of West to disarm criticism, 
for his position was one to outrage the sensi- 



THREE YOUNG MEN. 323 

bility of men native to the soil. To be sure, to 
be known in England as the king's favorite is to 
shut the mouth of reverential calumny. 

Much has been said about the sort of work 
these artless friends contrived between them. 
They may be mostly seen now at Windsor, in 
the royal palace. And after one has smiled at 
the old-fashioned treatment of grand subjects, 
— the tame faces and the academic raiment, — 
enough remains of intelligent disposition in 
the groups, and of composition beyond the habit - 
of England, to justify Americans still in their 
pride and respect for the worthy Pennsylva- 
nian. 

Fortunately for us, the grand style was the 
style of West, so soon to bring disaster and 
death to poor Hay don, who followed in his 
steps ; for that style was well suited to render 
the battle-pieces so invaluable to us, by Trum- 
bull, and which owe much of their excellence 
to the teachings of West. But Trumbull had 
more sentiment, more delicacy, than West. 

We fear Americans do not justly value these 
noble works of one who shared with Washing- 
ton the glories they represent. We every day 
too easily undervalue our own artists. It is sad 
to say that to a remark of Thackeray they owe 



324 A SMEAF OF PAPFHS. 

some of the consideration they enjoy. " Never 
neglect or forget Trumbull," he said ; and poor 
America accepted the boon of praise, and 
thought better of her revolutionary artist. 

But later, when the aroma of Sir Joshua and 
Gainsborough (a flavor which England will find 
it hard to match) and their direct personal 
influence was fading away, three young men 
from America, brought from the two extremities 
of the Union and its seaboard centre, fortu- 
nately met in London, and had, by their mutual 
and friendly development, a great influence on 
the Art both of England and 'America, — AU- 
ston, Leslie, Newton. These three were the 
three best and most capable artists of their time 
in their speciality. They were friendly rivals, — 
differenced sufficiently from each other to have 
each a field of his own, and yet so sympathetic 
that the progress of one was the progress of all. 

How pleasant to read in the Life of Irving of 
his surrender to the fascination of this group, — 
such a following, indeed, that he once seriously 
thought of throwing up the pen for the pencil, 
and so making sure of his friends. Genre 
pictures, groups of the olden time, not, as with 
Fuseli, the convulsed creatures of tragedy and 
the dream-land which raw pork could furnish, 



THREE YOVNO MEN. 825 

but gentle, graceful figures, not too pedantic in 
their antique costume, moving, as in a tableau 
vivant, under glowing light and color, — this was 
the new field of these young men. And, oddly 
enough, the one by nature the least fitted for 
this kind of art was its first successful origina- 
tor, — Allston. He painted noticeable pictures 
of the kind which afterwards was called pictures 
of high or genteel comedy, and the new vein 
soon deserted by him was worked with increas- 
ing success by the others. 

There was soraething in Charles Robert Leslie 
of genuine comedy of the most refined and sub- 
tile sort, which places him at the head of this 
group in this kind of art. 

His most successful example, " Sancho and 
the Duchess," goes as far as elegant comedy can 
go. " Sterne and the Grisette," by Newton, is 
his best expression of his talent in this direction, 
perhaps ; but we lose sight of the partial success 
of Allston in this kind, when we think of his 
noble and imaginative works, which belong to a 
higher region, and where his friends could not 
follow him. 

The subjects were drawn from the gayer 
scenes of Shakespeare, Gil Bias, Don Quixote, 
and Sterne. And thev made a school. The 



326 A SHEAF OF PAPERS. 

central figure is Leslie. His admiration was 
de Hooghe, and he thought of him while painting 
his quiet and luminous interiors. " I have not 
color as Newton has," he used to say; "there is 
in yon floor of his a tint to which I cannot attain. 
I see cold color in Nature, and must paint what 
I see." And Nature is every day rewarding his 
fidelity to the truth as he saw it by clothing 
his somewhat crude tints with her golden web 
of time, filming with harmony what asked for it, 
and so making his pictures perfect. 

The list is long of English artists who fol- 
lowed in the footsteps of Leslie, and many 
have merit, — the Courbalds, Egg, Landseer, 
and many another. But not one of them has 
the subtlety of either Leslie or Newton. Leslie 
generally seizes the happy moment, as Newton 
expressed it once, when there is a transfer of 
action and feeling, when the passing moment 
partakes of the past and the future ; and though 
his costumes are never studied carefully from 
the historical truth, they are simple in fold, and 
the grace and beauty of his women is all his 
own. It is hard to say whether, in this respect, 
Leslie or Newton is superior. Leslie's have a 
more modest charm, more naivete and uncon- 
scious grace ; while Newton's have a poignancy 



THREE YOUNO MEN. 327 

and slyness which make them irresistible. When 
seeing once, later, a picture by Newton, and only 
a portrait, Allston said, " T cannot look at it ; it 
is immodest." Not that it really was, but the 
sly, searching expression was too much for the 
anchorite of Cambridgeport. 

Leslie painted the "Coronation and the Bap- 
tism," two famous court-pictures, of which 
there are by Heath admirable engravings. His 
" Widow Wadman," the triumph of slyness, 
but not otherwise remarkable, is one of his most 
popular pictures, through the print of it. Boston 
is fortunate in possessing the portrait of Walter 
Scott, pronounced by Lockhart the best one 
ever made. In it one can see the famous racon- 
teur brooding over some border legend, his long 
upper lip quivering with the already coming 
story. But the home of Leslie now is South 
Kensington. There his sweet women smile for 
ever, and his gentle and intellectual humor 
never fades. 

Many of his best pictures are there, and at- 
tract always admiring crowds. One gets to love 
them very much, and to wish that America had 
more. The only first-class Leslie America once 
owned, " Shallow and Anne Page," has returned 
to England. We fear " The Gentle Student," 



328 A SBEAF OF PAPERS. 

Newton's lovely pendant, in the house of Mr. 
Phillip Hone, may have followed too. 

Boston, fortunately, has several excellent 
works of Newton. The " Importunate Author," 
the " Don Quixote," and the Dutch and Spanish 
girls, are here. No one can see them without 
falling in love with their beauty and grace, — 
though it be a little meretricious, — when floated 
on so exquisite a charm of color. Newton had 
a sentiment for color all his own, and delight- 
fully appropriate for his subjects. One sees that 
he had closely studied Watteau and Rubens. 
His glazes often half destroyed his pictures ; 
macgylp, an unfortunate combination of boiled 
oil and mastic varnish, of course could not live 
at peace with linseed oil. They quarrelled, and 
often the scars of their conflicts will be seen on 
some fair face which deserved a better fate. 

Both in Leslie and in Newton there is prodig- 
iously what the French call esprit; their pictures 
are alive with it. They would not undertake a 
work that was not congenial to their genius ; 
and therefore, within its limits feeling at home, 
they succeeded. How far from the piquant 
charm of the Dutch or Spanish girl of Newton 
are the formidably natural and uninteresting 
figure-pieces of so many French of the late im- 



Three yovnq men. 329 

perial days ! These pictures add liothing to 
what the photograph gives us. The artist cop- 
ied a dress, silk or satin, — it was no harder than 
that, — and then put a head and hands to it. 
But it has no charm, is doing nothing in partic- 
ular, and does not fascinate you. It has a fatal 
perfection of technique. Its very perfection is 
almost inhuman ; at all events, there is not a 
man's sensibility in it to act on our own. 

And AUston, whom we knew and loved; 
what can we add to the affectionate recognition 
the world, at least the world of America, has 
given him ? Leslie had the vis comica^ subordi- 
nated to the restrictions of a remarkable good 
sense and taste. Newton was master of the wild 
melody of the pallette, and a picturesqueness all 
his own ; but neither had imagination ; only half 
a dozen men in the world then conspicuously 
possessed that regal power. But AUston had 
it ; and if life had been wholly propitious to him, 
might have soared on its wings till he found 
himself face to face with the great of old. The 
temple of* Leslie's worship was in the heart of 
those homely golden Dutch interiors, where Os- 
tade and de Hooghe find for us a Holland which 
we will never forego. Newton found his ideal 
in the blandishments of Norman and Southern 



330 A SHEAF OF PAPERS. 

beauty ; but Allston was a direct descendant of 
old Venice. As Turner matched himself against 
a master-piece of Claude, we might proudly hang 
" The dead man brought to life by touching the 
bones of Elisha" by the side of Sebastiano del 
Piombo's sublime " Lazarus." For a modern to 
have wing enough, even for a moment, to share 
the flight of such an illustrious master, was al- 
most as great a miracle as the one the picture 
represents. It is a certain dim imaginative gran- 
deur, a certain dim imaginative sweetness, with 
the color now of Correggio and now of Titian ; 
that is the home of AUston's genius. Look not 
for mere carnal beauty in him ; his women dream 
and glide before you, but never cast on man a 
look of coquetry or glamour. Their expression 
is addressed to the mind ; it is the soul that tries 
to speak in their faces ; and if you care not for 
that, you can easily comfort yourself with the 
earthly beauties of Greuze or Newton. And his 
landscapes ; find me anywhere pictures in which 
the very hills are in the very spirit of the scene, 
and not the outward shell. Find me landscapes 
anywhere which are any more beautiful. He 
does not paint a tree or a hill, to make you see 
those natural objects, but he delicately brings you 
into contact with the impression they have made 



THREE YOUNG MEN. 331 

on him, — the print, with all the breath of life 
left on his sensitive spirit by the very life of that 
which he represents. Corot does this in his way ; 
he breathes upon his canvas a gray film, and 
straightway you are walking the fields beside 
him, with the quiet daylight all around you. 
This apprehension of something more than the 
form of things, the in-dwelling divine essence, — 
that something which made Wordsworth say of 
a flower it 

" Gave him tliouglits too deep for tears," — 

that common term of all animate, yea, and of all 
inanimate things, the axis of divinity on which 
each turns and has its being, — is the inspiration 
of modern landscape. The outward world says 
to us what it never did to our fathers ; our famil- 
iarity with it has taught us its language. The 
balsam of its mute fellowship helps many a 
wounded spirit, when once its look inspired 
aversion and distrust, and not peace. Without 
this interpretation of it, the prices paid for the 
Daubignys, the Corots, the Rousseaus, would 
be but money thrown into the sea. Each of 
these illustrious artists takes upon the point 
of his pencil, as it were, a dew-drop from the 
freshness of Nature, and so helps all to taste a 



332 A SHEAF OF PAPERS. 

honey-dew which nourishes the soul. Among 
these idealists of landscape, certainly was AU- 
ston. His Italian landscape is a poem, where 
unite the murmur of many Ausonian breezes, 
the fruit-like color of the ripened South, the 
mystery of far-away lands and shadowy castles ; 
a bouquet gathered from a thousand flowers in 
a thousand fields, and all divinely shut in the 
narrow compass of a square of gold. 



OLD BOSTON. 833 



OLD BOSTON. 

TT is a nice thing to grow up with one's town ; 
■^ grow with its growth, and strengthen with 
its strength ; but to do that well, the town 
must not be too large. Diffused through many 
streets and houses, one's affection is too much 
diluted to be felt. A snug, little, compact city, 
with the water all about it, with its come and 
go of tides, the sea's emotional expression and 
change of mood, as, only the other day, Emerson 
said, — 

" And twice a day the swelling sea 
Takes Boston in its arms," — 

for it is of Boston we are speaking, — permits 
identification of self with it, and the mind, like 
the sea, can daily embrace it. It is an odd thing 
how much of the cat is in all of us, — a silent, 
unexpressed attachment to place ; sometimes a 
hate of it. Our spirits get welded in to its 
stone, brick, and mortar; we are its inhabitants, 
and finally, in some degree, its expression ; " a 
Bostonian" means incarnated Boston, in a way 



334 A SHEAF OF PAPERS. 

he can never know ; but other cities see it in 
him, and we see their city in others. Who does 
not recognize the airy New Yorker, with his 
vague superiority over citizens of other towns, 
for which he is beholden to metropolitan vast- 
ness, while perhaps secretly envying the com- 
pactness and culture of the " one-horse town " of 
the triple hills, lost as he is in the ever-increas- 
ing tide of foreign and native immigration, with 
Tweed above him, till his Americanism recover 
itself and rings become a dissolving pageant; 
the Philadelphian, whose mysterious ground of 
attachment to his native town is not so clear to 
others ; have they not both taken up something 
from their residence which makes them what 
they are? This mystery of a Philadelphian's 
attachment to his native town is something 
which makes it differ from that which others 
have for their dwelling-places. In Europe, he 
is not quite content. He misses his Chestnut 
Street. I was once with a distinguished lady of 
Philadelphia making the rounds by torch-light 
and moonlight of the upper gradin of the Coli- 
seum, when she interrupted her delight to explain 
how much she missed Philadelphia. 

Baltimore, sacred home of the terrapin, can- 
vas-back, and the rice-bird ! Can the cata- 



OLD BOSTON. 335 

clysm of war have buried for ever the facile aud 
friendly intercourse, the genial hospitality, the 
astonishing hands and feet of its fair inhab- 
itants ? On the border-land between America 
and rebellion she has suffered more than we 
know. Still, can any one mistake the brilliant, 
sparkling lover of the monumental city? Has 
she not that sweet Southern movement of ges- 
ture and accent which shows that the South and 
Baltimore are wrought too into her blood ? 

Our compact little city of fifty years ago had 
a homely charm of which the Bostonian of to- 
day can imagine little. It then had still the 
look of a quiet English provincial town. It 
had not much over forty thousand inhabitants. 
Foreigners were comparatively unknown ; ser- 
vants then — imagine it, ye critics of Celtic 
heedlessness and unsmartness! — were all Amer- 
ican. The famous Jack Downing Papers — con- 
tinued so cleverly by a son of New York — had 
for their author a Bostonian, father of an illus- 
trious historian. One of his earliest-printed bits 
of humor describes a servant of those days. 
A Yankee from the country, who had come to 
Boston to sell his "notions," — apple-sauce 
among them, — filled up his time of waiting for 
a customer by going into service. A party was 



336 A SHEAF OF FAPERS. 

given at the master's house ; and he is described 
as interrupting it with a country freedom. 
Bursting into the parlor, he said to the guests : 

" Take something ; try the frozen stufp. Did 
not you call me ? I thought I heeard a yell." 

Just as he began to understand the mystery 
of the polish of fire-irons, and to get licked into 
shape, he sold his apple-sarce, and wanted to 
leave. 

" All right, mister ; I'll trouble you for them 
dollars ! I've sold my sarce, and if the mouth 
of the man that bought it ain't soon like the 
puckers of your coat, I don't know." 

Homely, bucolic days, fled for ever from New 
England, and only surviving in the fading re- 
membrance of some veteran ! Mr. Stuart, an 
English traveller, somehow mixed up with John- 
son's Boswell and a duel, came to our neigh- 
borhood to escape notice. He was loud in 
exultation over the Arcadian simplicity that he 
found, — all the farmers' house doors on the 
latch, not a bolt drawn at night. I really sup- 
pose that this New England population of pure 
Puritan descent, with scarcely a taint of foreign 
blood, with the Bible kneaded into their very 
thoughts and lives, did then present a spectacle 
probably unmatched on earth. A few watch- 



OLD BOSTON. 387 

men, of the old school of George the Fourth, 
in their long coats and with lanterns, were in 
London streets among the victims of many a 
Tom-and-Jerry prank. Here, they were few in 
number, personally known to most, the most 
inexpensive police force a town could know. 
We all remember, later, when the growing 
j)rosperity and crime made a change inevitable, 
how hostile public opinion was to the regiment- 
ing of a genuine police force. Those marks of 
an aristocracy, the livery of the state, people 
won't stand, it was said. 

Our town then was a village to what it is 
now. It had but one theatre, at the corner of 
Federal Street, if I am not mistaken. There 
a really admirable company gathered; for the 
theatre then was in the ascendant ; Scott had 
not brought his magic-lantern of a novel — a 
peaceful play at the fireside — into competition 
with it. Then in England Byron did not dis- 
dain to be a theatrical manager. It so hap- 
pened that I heard from the father of Lester 
Wallack, who was a page in Byron's theatre, 
the genuine history of Brummel's overthrow 
in the matter of neck-cloths, and the intro- 
duction of the turn-over collar, soon afterwards 
so universal among the poets of the time that 

15 V 



338 A SHEAF OF PAPEBS. 

the portrait even of the puritanical Soiithey 
had it. 

Coming late one night to his theatre in full 
dress, after a party, Byron looked over the 
accounts ; but finding himself embarrassed by 
the starched muslin that Brummel had imposed 
on the world, he dashed it to the ground and 
turned over his collar. A gentleman standing 
by said, — 

" Lord Byron, you have influence enough to 
change the fashion. Please do it, and relieve 
us of Brummel's winding-sheet. " 

And he did. 

At the Federal Street theatre were the Pel- 
bys, Kellner, and many more of the good old 
school, as fixtures ; among them came, at times, 
Cooper, the noblest Roman of them all, — manly 
in look, noble in voice, believed in by all, and 
therefore believing in himself. There was the 
scene of the famous Kean riot, when virtuous 
Boston rose at an imputation, however irrelevant 
to his acting, of marital infidelity, and nearly 
brought the house about his ears. There, as a 
small child, I saw the Forty Thieves, and the 
marvellous Moi'giana ; and when a troop of 
horse came visibly advancing, at the conclusion 
of the piece, to punish somebody, I stood up 



c 



OLD BOSTON. 339 

and screamed with terror. There I saw the 
elder Kean in Shylock ; one incident of the play 
only is fixed in memory, — his gesture, the flash 
of his eye, as he suddenly produces from his dress 
the balance ; the eager vindictiveness of his look, 
when caution is prescribed to the Jew not to 
exceed his due debt of flesh. The drop-scene 
was a view of Charlestown bridge, — we had 
no mill-dam then, — and above it was written, 
"veluti in speculo." 

We had a Common in Boston then, and have 
one yet; but for how long only aldermen and 
the Fates can know. Blessed for ever be the 
memory of the disregarded benefactor who gave 
those lungs to the growing child of his love I 
The Common then was surrounded by a double 
fence — the second one defining the Malls — 
of wood, with posts and three cross-bars. The 
only paths of importance across it ran from 
Hancock and led to Pond Street, and one across 
to Winter, a continuation of West Street. Yes, 
there was another from Park Street, upper cor- 
ner, running to the same point, then as now the 
favorite place for coasting. But how different 
the simple, homely vehicle of the homely boy 
of those times to the piratical -looking engine 
which now occupies its place ! There was a 



340 A SHEAF OF PAPERS. 

famous sled, named "Nimble Dick," with rings 
on its side which rattled, made by a negro, 
which is still remembered by some old gentle- 
men as the ne plus ultra of speed and beauty. 

The Common then deserved its name ; for J 
believe on all English commons animals are per- 
mitted to graze. Cows did on ours, in goodly 
numbers, and little boys delighted to drive blunt 
arrows against their sides, and to see their comic 
caricature of the deer's movement, that cross- 
cutting of the hind-legs which Nature furnishes 
as a protection to what we so much value at 
breakfast. 

Then the great tree was a yoang and lusty 
fellow. No plaster on his enfeebled body ; no 
canes to support his aged limbs ; but though 
with a history running back to the town's birth- 
day, still its crest of verdure was unseared by 
age. Many of the trees which now look old 
had not then been set out. The Paddock elms 
Avere in their place ; they are not now ; and 
their English brothers running down the Mall 
from Park Street corner were there. How 
long, too, they may remain, only the improved 
views of civic decoration, in the future, may 
declare. 

The Common was generally open, without a 



OLD BOSTON. 341 

tree or a path, a beautiful field of natural grass, 
without, to be sure, the added luxuriance of the 
present. But there were poplars in front of 
Beacon Street, and willows, here and there, from 
which boys made whistles when the sap began to 
run. The famous September gale overturned 
many, and elms were set out in their place. There 
was a willow in the frog-pond, in the middle of 
the Beacon Street side, at its edge ; and what is 
more, frogs were there too, in great numbers ; 
and their music gave to the town a country air. 
At the Park Street end of the pond, there was 
a rock, just enough out of the water for the 
boys to sit on when putting on their skates : no 
Irish boys, no German boys, or very few then, 
but plenty of negroes. The negro has been stead- 
ily dying out at the North. A gentleman of New 
York, interested in the Stuyvesant property, 
told me that of some hundreds once connected 
with it, only a few families survived ; and this 
was twenty years ago. Very likely not one of 
them remains now. The Boston negroes colo- 
nized "Negro Hill," a place of vague horror to 
white boys, lying on the slope of the hill 
towards the Massachusetts General Hospital. 
How silently Nature works ! the departure of 
these many blacks is unsignalized. Some new 



342 



A SHEAF OF 



ones, to be sure, have come in their place, but 
theirs is not the swelling current of foreign 
immigration. Perhaps some day there may be 
the same silence through the great Southern 
States ; and who knows what child of Europe, 
what machine, which can better resist than he 
the fierceness of a Southern sun, may be a slave 
in his place ! 

Boys, black and white, fought a good deal. 
Generally, there was much more fighting than 
now ; and it was a settled axiom of the white 
boy, that if he kicked the negro's shin his nose 
would bleed ; but he generally began with the 
nose. Fierce wars were waged by boys of 
different parts of the town, who generally had 
it out on the Common ; and we hear that some- 
thing of the same sort survives, and that little 
" West-end " boys, for fear of " South-enders," 
still hardly dare cross the Common. They 
would in those days struggle forward to the 
Common's centre, near the great tree, and there 
the South-enders would be met by stratagem. A 
barn — John Hancock's, we suppose, between his 
house and Joy Street, an unpainted country- 
barn — was used, like the horse of Troy, to hold a 
troop of combatants for the North-end, who, 
waiting till their opponents were slyly decoyed 



OLD BOSTON. 343 

half-way up the neighboring hill, would issue 
thence to their confusion and overthrow. That 
barn was then also the " Museum" of the town. 
When caravans visited Boston, after making 
the circuit of the Common, the camel on the 
lead, they were housed there, and the roar of 
the lion would strike a terror to the children up 
and down the street. 

Beacon Street was not much of a street then, 
though its sunny merits had been recognized. 
Its sidewalk was mostly of boards, and the 
lower end unbuilt upon. I can remember an 
old low house under horse-chestnut trees, back 
from the street, to which led a gravel path. I 
can see in memory a figure of the Peter Parley 
sort, in brown coat and long stockings, going up 
that path, and I was told it was Mr. Vinal who 
lived there. Horse-chestnut trees were great 
favorites then in Boston. Those I remember 
the best were exactly where the Tremont House 
now stands ; access to which boys of the Latin 
schooh obtained through a gap in the unpainted 
fence, for the sake of the nuts. 

One of the features of Boston in the far-away 
past was the habit of building houses above 
double or triple terraces, and with gardens in 
front or behind. In Beacon Street there were 



344 A SEEAF OF PAPERS, 

three, at least, of these terraced houses, and 
one was remarkable for its site, which was a 
lofty eminence, with a garden and arbors about 
it, at the corner of Tremont and Court Streets. 
It was a long walk to the summit where the 
house of Mr. Gardner Greene stood ; but later, 
when there was a want felt for land for a rail- 
road depot, certain speculating gentlemen re- 
moved the hill bodily to the water's side, leaving 
in its place Pemberton Square, for long a nest 
of desirable private residences ; but ever-active 
change, which in our cities displaces every 
thing, has made those houses bristle with office 
signs, and given them over to law and trade. 
At the time we speak of, the sea washed the 
whole length of Charles Street ; but a bold 
project was formed of cutting across it a com- 
munication to the opposite shore, to be called the 
Western Avenue. While that was building, it 
was the custom of the boys to play in and out 
of the mud-scows which brought the earth 
necessary for the avenue. They would leap 
from the wall in Charles Street into the scows, 
and scramble back again. A boy once, while 
leaping, had the scow pushed from him by a 
larger boy, and he fell into the water. Without 
much caring to see him out, a crowd bore every- 



OLD BOSTON. 345 

where the news of his death by drowning. He 
was got home to be well scolded, warmed in a 
bath, and, with fresh clothes, could think of the 
good whipping preparing for him on his return 
to school. That school was in Berry Street, 
next to Dr. Channing's church ; and a round 
ferule was very active there. When on a visit 
to Maine with a relative, he had been induced 
to declaim, — 

" On Linden, when the sun was low," 

before an admiring circle of workmen in a glass 
factory. Detaining the boy and his relative, 
with a farther show of the place, they blew for 
him a hollow cane of glass, twisted like the 
famous columns of Solomon's temple. He 
would proudly walk with that cane, its interior 
filled with milk for refreshment. After vaca- 
tion, he took his cane to school, and hid it 
behind his desk ; but before recess, he bran- 
dished it while the master was not looking. 
When school was out, all the school descended 
upon the cane, and in their admiration broke it 
to pieces, and he was whipped for the disturb- 
ance. 

When, before, at a previous school with the 
same schoolmaster, — a low building in a huge 

15* 



846 A SHEAF OF PAPERS. 

unoccupied lot in Pond Street, — lie had the luck 
to find money on a path in the Common. In his 
enthusiasm at the sight of what he thought 
buttons in the path, he cried out to a gentle- 
man not far off, — 

" See what I have found ! " 

" Don't trouble me with your nonsense ! " 
replied the other ; but when the boy said, " It 
is not buttons, but silver ! " the man, too 
late, expressed a lively interest in the discov- 
ery. The boy considered awhile whether he 
should invest it for himself in the purchase of a 
kaleidoscope, — a pretty toy then lately invented 
by Sir David Brewster, — or expend it for the 
common good; he decided on the latter. He 
made the -money all over to a large boy, who 
purchased heaps of oranges, figs, prunes, and 
raisins with it, and who then carefully divided 
the whole among the school-boys, but some- 
how, by miscalculation, forgot the giver of 
the feast, who remained fruitless. The joyous 
uproar attracted the master's attention, who 
demanded the delinquent. The universal bene- 
factor was pointed out as he, and punished for 
the noise he did not make, and the fruit he did 
not get. This led him to think of many things, 
and to philosophize if, after all, the natural law 



OLD BOSTON. 347 

of selfishness is not the safer rule to follow in 
such a case. 

We have said that the water fringed Charles 
Street. There were two rope-walks built upon 
piles, one behind the other, objects of great 
attraction to boys. They were not much per- 
mitted to see the mysteries of the interiors, 
where in shadow, cut by great squares of light, 
" the spinners backward go." 

But round the piles the water came and went ; 
and in the shadow little fish and eels in num- 
bers would gleam and disappear. They were 
often adroitly caught in the straw hats of the 
boys ; and injured parents at home grieved at 
the unpermanency of the head-gear for which 
they had paid so roundly. 

The great waste of waters between Charles 
Street and Brookline at low tide left many bare 
places, the haunt of bittern, peep, and gulls, 
which boys provided with guns chased not 
without success. How strange to think of that 
obliterated sea, and the magnificent avenue, one 
of the finest in the world, running over the spot 
of such wildness ! 

The boys' favorite bathing-place was close 
behind the modest church of Dr. Sharpe, one of 
the few which, so far as we know, has not under- 



348 A SHEAF OF PAPERS. 

taken as yet, like the chapel of Our Lady of 
Loretto, to fly through the air and find a new 
resting-place. 

The water was sufficiently deep and clean, 
though even then complaints were made of the 
sewage of the town. To somebody complain- 
ing of the disturbance of it the new Western 
Avenue was making, a philosophic merchant 
replied, — 

" Buy some of the stock, and you won't smell 
it!" 

A multum in parvo for a philosophy which 
reconciles us to an evil of which we get the 
good. So horse-railroad stockholders should 
not miss with much concern the Paddock elms. 

The unoccupied spaces, now so closely built 
upon all over town, were very great. There 
were gaps everywhere, even in this little penin- 
sula. Chestnut Street was built upon pretty 
far down ; but behind it, and all the way down 
from the top of Mt. Vernon Street to Charles, 
was open ground. A few houses crowned the 
crest of Mt. Vernon; but there was an open 
field in it, a little beyond Walnut Street at 
the top, which communicated with the terraced 
garden which went all the way to the house 
belonging to it in Beacon Street. The house 



OLD BOSTON. 349 

next to it, terraced in front, had a famous 
orchard filled with excellent apple and pear 
trees, as the boys knew only too well. Some 
streets have undergone notable changes. The 
chief of these is Pearl Street, which had some 
of the finest houses and gardens in Boston. 
There grew the infant Athenaeum, until its 
treasures were transferred to its present site, 
some of them soon to make their third remove 
to the future Art Museum. 

If old Boston has been for so long called the 
Athens of America, the new town, planting 
itself where once flowed the sea, might well be 
called its Venice. Both are built upon piles ; 
and it would have been well indeed if a farther 
resemblance could kave been retained, and 
canals and lagoons could have freshened the 
dead flat of houses, however splendid. Our 
wind chiefly blows from the West. It comes 
over this broad level laden with clouds of dust, 
which would have made it proper to make 
Commonwealth Avenue take the name of 
Athens' presumably windiest street, GEolus . 
Street. The water of a basin interposed some- 
where between the forking of the mill-dam and 
Charles Street would have allayed much of 
this dust, and by flood-gates could have been 



350 A SHEAF OF PAPERS. 

retained at will. Fish might have been kept 
there, and pretty pleasure-boats have been seen, 
as on the waters of the public garden. 

But it is too late now; and let us be suffi- 
ciently thankful for an avenue such as the 
world can hardly match. 



PROVINCIALISM. 351 



PROVINCIALISM. 

TDROVINCrALISM is the relation of deperid- 
ence felt by a colony upon its mother coun- 
try, or the looking up of an inferior civilization 
to what it venerates and admires. The colony 
is the child who for long is in leading-strings to 
the parent. Like the growing boy, he is snubbed 
and chastised by his stronger sire, and knocked 
about and abused generally by any grown nation 
which considers it worth its while to do so. His 
opinion is set aside, his desires ignored. 

Like the child, the colony has its secret sen- 
sitiveness, but capacity, for suffering; and for 
long endures, with what philosophy it may, the 
familiar disregard and outrage. 

But as with the boy, the sense of acquired 
manhood is often expressed by a challenge to its 
tormentor ; and a substantial thrashing opens the 
eyes of the older party to the changed relations 
between them. It requires a renewal of its first 
experience to convince the bullying father that 
his son is full grown. 



352 A SHEAF OF PAPERS. 

Then, with a pat on the back, it patronizes it 
as " a chip of the old block," and half admires 
the very pluck which defeats its old tyranny. 

Such was at first the relation of the United 
States with the mother country. The progress 
of it, from the mere political disruption of the 
political tie between them and the separation 
and freedom of the present day^ has been amus- 
ing to witness. When the war for independence 
was over, independence in thought, taste, and 
equality was as yet by no means attained. Both 
parties knew it and felt it. All the theology, all 
the law, all the literature of America, cried out 
for the sources that had fed them. The divorce 
of life from life, of mind from mind, which the 
fourth of July, 1776, proclaimed, was practically 
impossible. Not by the cataclysms and disrup- 
tion of such a convulsion as a war for indepen- 
dence, can a substitute be found for the natural 
relations of parent and child. Fortunately the 
genuineness of the growth of republicanism in 
this country saved it from any slavish longing 
for a reunion which was impossible. The great 
sea, too, between, where voyages were few and 
long, helped much. 

A soreness in the relation between an Eng- 
lishman and an American was for years felt. 



PROVINCIALISM. 863 

The American longed, in a spirit of hospitality 
and courtesy, to compensate for the breach he 
had made in the royal territory. A genuine 
affection for the soil of his fathers, half-sup- 
pressed but very real, added its influence of re- 
spect for his visitor. He really, at heart, never 
paraded his independence. If he showed it, it 
was because it was genuine. The bayonet and 
the battle-field had taken the snob out of him 
for ever. But his hospitable courtesy, and his 
deference for the visitor who represented the 
glories of England, so mixed with his brain and 
his blood that he knew they were a part of his 
being, was inevitably and constantly mistaken 
by his haughty visitor for the snobbishness with 
which he was so familiar at home. The progress 
from nominal to real independence, to those who 
remember the visits of English forty years ago, 
is amusing ; of the ponderous books which usu- 
ally followed such a visit, it is certainly enter- 
taining to contrast the tone with the feeling of 
England at the present day. It was then as if 
some unguent of unkindness had been applied to 
the eyes of the visitor to prevent his seeing 
whatever was worth being seen, noticing what 
was worth being noticed, feeling what it was 
natural a kinsman should feel. The only thought 



354 A SHEAF OF PAPERS. 

in tlie Englishman's mind was to try and find 
here a more or less successful imitation of the 
England he had left behind. Not one had any 
open vision for the great stream of national life 
to which all nations were tributaries, and which, 
though retaining the master-flavor of the English 
race, showed already, to any one able to see, a 
divergence as interesting as it was remarkable, 
from the Anglo-Saxon method of government 
till then. 

Basil Hall could only sum up the many de- 
fects of the Americans in the expressive phrase 
that " they wanted loyalty ; " that is, that they 
wanted a sentiment for the very thing they had 
repudiated ! The yelps and barks of F^ron and 
the lesser travellers of those days all signified a 
dislike of the country whose hospitality they had 
received, and whose true points of interest they 
always managed not to see. There can be no 
doubt, if that benevolent philosophic spirit, in 
which England is sadly deficient with any thing 
which differs from herself, — doubly true when it 
is a child of her own, — if that spirit of acceptance 
and conciliation had understood even merely the 
future greatness of her child, and had welcomed 
and not snubbed it ; had studiously retained the 
hold which the long memories of the past, a 



PROVINCIALISM. 355 

common literature and glory, very easily might 
the breach which was caused have been healed, 
and the independent child have still remained 
loyal to all of England but its government, and 
as affectionate as a child naturally should be to 
its parent. 

The fatal element of provincialism hid from 
the Englishman any clear view of that mighty 
youth whose manhood was to be even lustier 
than his own. The conflict of the American of 
those days between the allegiance of the heart 
and his newly purchased isolation gave a tone 
of bitterness hardly to be understood in our day, 
as book after book of insolent superiority scolded 
down the offending child, which finally became 
chronic. The disgust and impertinence of each 
was discounted here before it was read; but 
strong in the confidence of their position, in 
spite of past experience, each new visitor was 
received with unfailing kindness. That spirit, 
by mean minds, was always mistaken for the 
apologetic humiliation of acknowledged inferi- 
ority. It is pathetic, almost, to think of the 
halo in the eyes of Americans which inevi- 
tably encircled the head of each new comer, in 
spite of past experience. He still stood, to 
them, for the country they had loved, and meant 



356 A SHEAF OF PAPERS. 

to love and reverence, if it still were permitted 
them to do so. But England has no true eye 
for a new thing. Set and fixed in her habits of 
action and thought, she can find no understand- 
ing of theories of government to which she is 
not used. If they are not her own, they must 
be bad. With no power to see the value of the 
equality of life in high and low, among the col- 
onists, which preceded the revolution even; with 
no power to discover the value of the simple ele- 
ments of a life where all are equal, where there 
is no primogeniture, no feudal shackle, but an 
Arcadian breadth of intelligent and conscientious 
farmers, and townsfolk who only differed from 
these by seeldng prosperity through other chan- 
nels, they fell hotly in criticism upon immaturi- 
ties which were inevitable, crudeness that was 
but the freshness of a new life, and so just missed 
seeing all that was important, and which their 
kinship alone should have enabled them to see. 

Therefore it was not without a certain morti- 
fied pride of justification, that finally the Amer- 
icans found themselves beholden not to any 
Englishman for an analysis not unmingled with 
eulogium of these new national phenomena, but 
to a foreigner, and he a Frenchman. De Tocque- 
ville's work was an event in the history not 



PROVINCIALISM. 357 

only of America but of Europe ; and England 
deigned to accept an exposition of the meaning 
of her child's intention that she had not been 
able to supply for herself. The day after the 
publication of that book, Americans held their 
heads higher. They could scarcely have so well 
analyzed their own intentions as another had 
here. They were content to live, and develop, 
from the molecule of the town-meeting, the 
gigantic life which is called a nation. France, 
however unfortunate herself in attaining stabil- 
ity and clear purpose in government, is in that, 
as in all things else, an admirable critic ; losing 
her head the moment she strikes into any new 
path, she has the clearest one when observing 
others who do so. It seems almost a fatal dis- 
advantage that she cannot turn upon herself 
those wonderful eyes which dissect and divide 
the threads of influence in others. If she 
could only study for herself to as much purpose 
as De Tocqueville did for us our web of law, 
society, and politics, the present might give the 
future guarantees of safety which it cannot now. 
We do not know that England took any 
humiliation to herself, that her boundless in- 
terest in the success or failure of her progeny 
failed to give her his insight into America's 



358 A SHEAF OF PAPERS. 

destiny, but it should. At all events, let us 
comfort ourselves that while she listened to no 
explanation, no statement from us, she did 
accept the same thing when it came in a French 
dress. Not but what, in England, there have 
been always currents running in favor of 
America. In some families there is a tradition 
of regard for the United States, which, as Amer- 
ica more and more justifies herself, is proudly 
proclaimed; and the great army of the poor, 
who always fondly turn their eyes to America 
as a field where privilege has been met and van- 
quished, and where the poor man can hold his 
head as high as the highest, have always re- 
garded America with affection. How strong 
that current was, was revealed, somewhat to 
their surprise, to the Americans during the late 
civil war, since we had not sought to foster it, 
nor pandered to it by emissaries of propagation, 
when we knew the feeling was hardly kept 
alive, as in the case of the Irish, by emigration. 
For the English, loyal to their sovereign, always 
have sought the colonies over which she reigned 
in preference to ours. The dumbness of that 
eloquent adhesion of the poor of England to 
their American brethren had more effect at 
home than is generally known here, and per- 



PROVINCIALISM. 359 

haps there. It gave a pause to the headlong 
sympathy of the governing classes for the over- 
throw of the government, whose existence they 
thought a standing menace to their own order. 
It was a balance much needed, and fully felt ; 
when the people of England point their thoughts 
and their anger one way, like a lion half aroused 
from sleep, England always gives heed to it. 
As we suppose, much more could be said, though 
we do not care to hear it, in justification of the 
strange attitude of Lord John Russell and so 
^many of his peers towards a friendly nation, 
than has been said. Masses, like individuals, 
have their instincts, and will blindly follow 
them. The English nobleman, often among the 
most Christian and hberal of men, secretly con- 
fesses to himself the injustice of his elevation 
above his fellows ; but he will fight for his order, 
as will any creature when at bay, and will 
accept any succor which Providence seems 
to furnish him without too curiously inquiring 
into its character. Much of England looks up 
to him as to one of the corner-stones of the 
temple of national life, and will at his side share 
his convictions and his prejudices. 

But all could not be safely said. On one side 
a past, pledged to the freedom of the black man. 



360 A SHEAF OF PAPERS. 

not far off huge masses of watchful and sus- 
picious prolStaires^ eyes across the sea, where 
wounded affection was dying out, or changing 
into the sparkle of indignation and disgust ; all 
warned him not to say his whole thought. So, 
by fits and starts, he would be loyal to right and 
international law, and again, as the false news 
came sweetly to his lips, drink of it with cheers 
to the future founders of a slave republic. 

It is always perhaps best to speak the truth, 
and in the main England likes to do so. If the 
governing classes — there was a world of meaning, 
in such a phrase as things then were — had all 
simply avowed that they thought their chance 
for increased stability, themselves and their 
order, had now come, and that they meant to 
embrace it, without looking beyond such a hope, 
it would have been manlier, and would have 
been more easily forgiven, than the half-friend- 
ship which is willing to stab. The old film 
over the eye which would not let England see 
America as De Tocqueville forced her to, till 
a war was inevitable, the roots of whose action 
must be sought far back in the records and 
debates of early senates, the convulsion of 
whose approach had been the commonplace of 
every thoughtful mind, whose meaning one 



PROVINCIALISM. 361 

would think even the blind could see, — the film 
was thickened till the English eye could only 
perceive therein a dispute about a tariff, or 
the cruel effort of the majority to oppress a 
minority of gentlemen and land-owners. Be- 
cause President Lincoln, with the intuitive 
sagacity of a statesman, conscientiously feeling 
his way between opposing duties, waited till the 
hour struck when both duty and prudence car- 
ried to his hands the proclamation of emanci- 
pation, England chose for long to consider it an 
accidental impulse on the part of the President, 
an unintentional success, by an effort to prostrate 
the adversary before the eyes of the world after 
failing to match its armies in the field. 

It is all best as it is. After the frightful 
wound which civil war gashed in the bosom of 
the South has been healed ; when she can come 
from her hospital of pain with returned life and 
vigor, the harrow and the spade of industry 
will have obliterated in the soil the scars of the 
battle-field as the new life will have cicatrized 
its soul. Then, America, whole with the whole- 
ness of universal liberty, can say to England, 
" We thank you I " 

Not only have we won by the war two victo- 
ries, — the one, not over our fellow-citizen, but 



362 A SHEAF OF PAPERS. 

over the demon who was driving him to his 
destruction ; the other, a victory beyond the sea 
over prejudice, misunderstanding, and dislike, 
— but we can thank England also, in that she 
helped to baptize us with a new manhood ; that 
the provincialism which for so long had made 
our mutual relations sore and ancomfortable 
has gone for ever. Armies whose numbers Eng- 
land never matched ; generalship where persist- 
ence and genius placed the American sword 
beside those of Europe's greatest conquerors ; a 
tenacity of conscientious purpose, which year 
upon year of defeat and delay did not cool, — 
these allow America to stand at her full stature, 
equal-eyed before the freemen of any country; 
and has, we dare to hope, for ever taken out of 
her shoulders the stoop of provincialism. 



THE END. 



Cambridge : Press of John Wilson and Son. 






( 



